Gravel Wagon

So today's update is something for the railway. It started life as a cheap second hand pickup from a local railway show and looked like this.

This is a Hornby Railroad wagon (R1085), which often comes as part of their train sets. It's a bit basic, as well as being overly plastically and a bit too vivid yellow for my taste.

I spent an evening adding some contrast paint, black, brown wash and picking out some replacement boards. Contrast and wash were used for the bulk of the painting as I wanted to preserve the printed text on the orginal wagon, and yellow overpaints easily. I also added a gravel load (spare ballast) to the wagon using a piece of spare packing foam as a base.

It now looks like this, a significant improvement!

Panthers

This month, I've completed some german Panther tanks. These are Forged in Battle Minatures, and I've painted a HQ of 2 and a platoon of 4 Panthers. I have another 8 of these to paint at some point, but I've struggled to motivate to paint these, so I've moved on to painting something else for now.

Viaduct

So things have been a bit quiet recently, hobby wise. Work has picked up, and I've also had a big project going on, a Will's viaduct.

This is for the loft layout and it's a bit of a whopper!

Kit went together fairly easily with the exception of the curved plastic underneath the arch sections which was a bit of a pain.

Jordanian Force

I had a game of Team Yankee - Arab Isreali War today.

I thought I'd take a few shots of the complete force, including 2 new M48 Pattons which are awaiting transfers.

Booty Tanks!

 Beutepanzer, or Booty Tanks, were a fairly common occurance in German service, especially in the early war and at the end of the war when armour was in short supply. They were commonly used for security roles, especially captured French and Italian tanks where the designs were fairly obsolete.

Some of the Soviet tanks, such as the T-34 or KV-1 where of at least comparable, if not superior in aspects to the current German designs and were more commonly seen in front line service. Often adopted 'ad-hoc' straight of the battle field by some units, occasionally these beutepanzers would be seen in greater numbers, such as 2.SS Panzer Division at Kursk who had captured 25 tanks and a repair workshop a month or so earlier and were able to equip an entire company with T-34 tanks in preperation for the battle of Kursk. These tanks had recieved some upgrades, with Panzer III cupolas and side skirts added. In addition to improving the visibility and protection respectively, these also helped change the profile of the tank, which, together with large German Army crosses, helped to reduce friendly fire.

These models are Forged in Battle and are their Kursk T-34 models. Two boxes has allowed me to produce a company of 2 HQ tanks and 2 platoons of 3 T-34.

Lending a Tow

Today's update is 12 artillery tractors for my Jordanian's. These are PSC Morris Quad Tractors. Nice little kit, which went together well.

These bring me to over 100 models painted this year, about on track to try and paint 200 models this year.

Panzerwerfers

So I finished 4 Panzerwerfers this weekend. These were armoured halftracks with Nebelwerfer 15cm rocket launchers mounted on top, used for artillery support. The models below are from Battlefront, and are in resin and metal.