Warhammer Wednesday: Rogal Dorn Main Battle Tank

Having built up the Rhino, I decided I wanted another armour kit. I'd seen this one featured online through Warhammers site, and a few build blogs. I couldn't find one for sale anywhere though in West Yorkshire.

Happily, Acme Games in Llandudno came to the rescue again! I love that shop.

A lot of stuff in the box.

The plastic was definitely thick, felt thicker than the Rhino. Snippers definitely needed for freeing the parts.

Lots of detailing and customisation options for this one.

Little bit of detailing work I was able to do myself, drilling out some of the gun barrels.

What is with Citadel having trouble with the floors of their armour kits?  A whole weirdly missing panel. Lots of other modellers have commented on this. Insert jokes about Flintstones-style tank crews having to run the tanks along...

The after-market suppliers have come to the rescue though.

Again, spray painted in black as an undercoat, before a matte-green coat.

In a similar manner to my Rhino kit, I wanted some troop figures for cameo scenes. The tank came with a couple of crew, but I wanted some soldiers. I had in mind some scenes of the tank on a break stop, and non-fighting-pose soldiers were a bit of a rarity. Eventually I hit on getting some loaders from the heavy weapons crew sprues, and got a couple online that had been split from a box set. I built up a few figures in more casual poses, and painted them the same colours as the tank.

Same locations in Wales I'd used for the Rhino. Up in the woods...

...and the moors above the site. Trying some forced-perspective stuff with the foreground plants and moss.

I wanted the effect of these being 'in universe' photographs.

Again, I really liked this kit. Apart from that bonkers bit of design work with the floorplan, the rest of this kit was terrific. Loads of customisable options, and went together brilliantly. 

 

Garden Railway Saturday; North Pilton Open Wagon

Needing rolling stock for a test train, I was finally able to use a kit I got as my subscriber gift when I started regularly buying Garden Rail Magazine.

The North Pilton Works open wagon is one of a range of modular wagons, to a similar design. Laser-cut ply, and some lovely metal wheels.

Considering this kit had spent a decade or more alternately in the loft, or a cellar, it was in pretty good nick. Only a little warping, but it was so well designed a kit that once it was all together, it held in place nicely.

There was an interesting, well thought-out mechanism for the opening doors.

With packing for the move underway, I was a bit limited for paints, so sprayed acrylic with some Citadel black for the ironwork and chassis.

It looked a bit dull, so I went for a Ffestiniog-inspired (in its turn, inspired by British Rail Civil Engineers, in turn inspired by Dutch Railways...) yellow stripe. Some dry-brushed weathering, and a gloss varnish coat finished it off.

 

Hornby: The Collector. An Industrial Tramway in 00 (Part 3)

And now for the final part of the Burneside-esque tramway saga, the countryside section.

As it went between the villages, the tramway stuck to the roadside; here, it went down the length, where the public footpath now runs.

Good old Middleton, and the Balm Road Branch, the location that just keeps on giving. As close as I could get to the atmosphere of Burneside in the present day.

More upcycling; this is actually the board from the Pensnett project, that was used for the exchange sidings. Usual packing foam and thin card scenic base.

Papier mache, from packing paper.

It ended up rather more grass-grown and covered than the real Burneside tramway had been, and I wish I'd had the budget for more, and better, trees...

Same business with the gloss varnish and scatter.

And here it is in print. Usually I break up these dioramas for re-using components, but I like this project enough that I'm probably going to keep these boards for future photoshoots. Who knows, I might be able to incorporate them into an actual layout.

 

Hornby: The Collector. An Industrial Tramway in 00 (Part 2)

Continuing the Burneside saga; the scene of the railway street-running tramway was what I was really looking forward to modelling. No trace of this remaining in the village, barring some faint impressions in the tarmac (I wonder if the rails are still under there?), but it ran roughly following the dashed white line of the road then down the side of the church, past the bus shelter.

The road was done in 1mm mountboard; I spent quite a lot of time trying the placement of various buildings to get the composition right.

At this stage, I was still thinking of using the resin buildings...

...but changed my mind, and went for using all plastic kits, either the 90's Town and Country... 

...or the earlier range, which were HO scale and mainly imports from German firm Pola. Using these would allow a bit of forced-perspective modelling.

Trying clearances.

Ah, the chaos of working at the old house, everything squished on the end of the table in the Workshop Kitchen Laundry.

This house was built for me by my parents back in the early 1990's as a pressie; I really wanted to re-use it, but the cream brickwork needed toning down a bit to look more Cumbrian. A few washes of thinned-down brown acrylic, and a pass of Citadel Nuln Oil did the trick. This was pretty much the method I used for all the buildings in the end.

And here's the diorama, complete with greenery.

This was exactly the sort of scene I'd envisioned when I started the project.

I'd mixed in a bit of scatter with the sprayed gloss varnish, to look like leaves blown into the roads by the rain and wind; I was wanting to model the layout as if it was the end of summer.

On the overhead shot, you'll maybe have noticed the railway running down the backs of the houses- as the above pic shows, this is one of the more tantalising remnants of the real tramway. There's a couple of places in the UK where you can see this sort of thing, the Leiston Works Railway being the best known, but it's too far for a quick jaunt though.

You get a bit of an idea with the Derwent Valley in York however.

I wanted a scene of the tramway squeezing through the back streets of the village, so used a space at the edge of the board, making the most of the backs of the existing street.

That Pola house was cut in half, and used to create a pair of low-relief houses.

This bit is one of my favourite views on the whole project.

Final part, the countryside section, will follow next...