SPA Modeler

Nice work Mark. I wonder if those flat bed rail cars would work for a Cold War railhead scene...

And the church... I see a perfect dio from the village square in Kelly’s Heroes or Ste Mere Eglise in The Longest Day...

Lyle, thank you. I appreciate it.

Carlos, thanks! I believe that you could use those flatcars in a cold war scenario. I believe they were well built enough to be used all the way into the 1970's and '80s, those that survived the bombings that is. After that, the newer flatcars that are designed to hold containers were brought in to replace them. As for the church, it isn't quite accurate for a St. Mere Eglise setting; it is more of a British/Irish style church, as well as a potentially German or Eastern European architecture style. I am debating on how to place this on a base of some sort to possibly use as a photo background to show my completed models. Still, I am a good ways from thinking about that now; there is still so much more detailing to do, including sourcing some stained glass windows.

Kelly's Heroes could work though.....

I did some railhead ops in Germany and stateside in the 80’s. I can not really remember what the Bundesbahn Flat cars looked like, but if that same type was still in use into my time, it might be cool to find one in 35th scale and one day do a Cold War railhead diorama.

I'll have to do a bit of research myself to know for sure. I do know that either Takom or Meng does do a 1/35th scale railroad flatcar. If the research does pan out; that would be your best resource for this kit.

EDIT: Correction: two other model companies issue kits of this rail car in 1/35th scale:

Sabre Model and Thunder Model. LZ Model does a resin one in 1/35th scale.

According to preliminary research in Wkipedia, these cars are still in use as they say all SS-class flatcars are in use 'from 1942' on.

That is all I've been able to find with my limited skills in searching for specific things online. Hope this helps Carlos.

That’s cool Mark. Thank you. I think that Dragon made a rail flatcar in 1/35.

Cool. I didn't know about Dragon. Thanks for letting me know.

I got more to post later; or I might wait till after Hobby Day to post a nice, long update.

Superb looking builds Mark!

Thanks Stuart. Here's more to check out.

Everyone, here's my latest update for this week. I'll start with my one aircraft.

This is my Israeli Sufa in 1/72 scale. I finally got the canopy, exhaust and wheel wells masked off:





Later, when I was painting everything, I shot an upper base color on this. It is Testor's Israeli Armor Sand:



That base coat showed me where a lot of gaps and seams were so I filled them in:







I set that aside to dry and went to work on more stuff, this time ground based. While I had the airbrush out, I shot a new base coat on the Austratt turret:





Finally! A smooth even coat of paint. Here it is on the "septic tank":



Still while painting, I went ahead and masked off the windows on the MAN tractor for the Pershing II truck:



Next came the paint for the tractor and the trailer:





The front platform broke off; it has since been repaired. Meanwhile I pulled out a more OD color for the Pershing II itself:



While still airbrushing, I shot a base coat of Panzer Schwartzgrua on the flat car. I thinned it a bit too much though:



Finally it was time to move ahead on the Nagmachon. I started by masking the tiny windows with Tamiya tape:



After that, I added all the extra fiddly bits and all the P/E screen mounting brackets. What a porcupine this has become:



I then first shot it with a dark OD color as a base:



After that dried up, I shot another coat of Israeli Armor Sand over it to try and get some modulation out of it. That is a bit hard to see in these pics, but it's there:





I also started the assembly of the tracks for this. They will go one later and then I plan on glossing this for a dirt wash and later dry-brush. The P/E screens will go on last.

After all that I wanted to start something simple and fun. I pulled out my AMT Space 1999 Hawk ship and got started on it. First were the engine pods:



Next were the armament pods:




Finally, the main engine halves got assembled:



And that's as far as I got on all this so far. I have more to come after Friday and Saturday so stay tuned.

Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

Nice work as always Duke!

That Austratt (or as a matter of fact, in Norwegian it is written Austrått, pronounced "Aus" + "straw" as in Strawberry and a long "ttt" - sound) ....

... looks just so amazing!

And the other ones also, but a big gun in 1/72 ... Amazing

- Kari