"The Mole is one of my favourite craft from Thunderbirds. The original concept was writer Alan Fennell's idea within the storyline for the episode "Pit of Peril". The original model was built by Ray Brown at the Slough Studios of APF in 1964. The Tractor was made almost entirely from plastic kit parts built on to a set of tracks from a "Vickers" tractor toy (the same toy was used as the basis for most of the International Rescue vehicles). The Mole itself was built of plastic wrapped around to form a tube with the auger made from balsa wood. Because the model was built in 1964 and I wanted my model to be as accurate to the original as possible, it was necessary to obtain all the kits cannibalized for the original. Not an easy task since most of them have not been in production for 20 years! The kits used on the original were: the Airfix 'Girder Bridge' and 'Footbridge', the Aurora 'B58 Hustler', or 'Boomerang Bomber' and the Revell 'Everything is Go Atlas Rocket'. transfers came from these and the Aurora 'Freedom Fighter'. Unfortunately the "Vickers" tractor proved to be quite impossible to track down. So I had to build this from scratch. Again quite a tedious task as there are 88 individual track plates to be made, as well as 8 wheels which are studded with rivets. for the wheels I built one master drive wheel and one master idler wheel and then made a silicone rubber mould to cast the others. These were threaded on 1/8th inch brass axles which ran through a basic box section tractor base which I made from ABS plastic. On to this was added mudguards made from 2mm perspex. The girder section which tips up to deploy the mole was made from the Girder Bridge suitably cut down and adapted the same way as the original. In fact 2 Girder Bridge kits are needed as the base plate is used twice and runs down behind the girders to make a stronger construction. On either side of this was stuck the 2 halves of the Atlas rocket, using liquid plastic cement. On top of the mudguards are the halves of one of the B58's engines, some plastic sprue, some more small parts from the Atlas and round cog-like wheels from the B58. most prominent of all on the front of the tractor unit are the 2 jet nozzles from the B58