Rapid Fire! Blitzkrieg in 20mm - Smialy(ish) Polish armoured train (or 'A walk into the Chinese shop')

 

 

Years ago I saw a scratch built model of the famous Polish armoured train Smialy in a wargames magazine that wet my apetite for trying something of the sort. Recently Adrian White showed a fantastic scratch built Smialy in a conversation on the Rapid Fire WW2 Wargames Rules FB page. Honestly I tryed to copy it but soon I noticed that in order to have something similar it would take a month's work. Just too much for me as there are plenty of stuff in the pipe line. Another option was to buy Fow's Smialy but being a 15mm model and at 150 Euro I decided to look in another direction.

 

In my local Chinese shop they had some 20mm-ish toy trains that I used for this conversion. Each set has a locomotive, a coal wagon and a coach. You need five of these sets in order to have Smialy but at 5 Euro each you are still far from Fow's price. And, as with all conversions, it will be my preeeeciousss....

 

 

The front and back Flat Railcars usually carried a small Tankette (FTFmodel) and they were transformed from two of the coaches.

 

 

The Artillery Wagons are made gluing two locomotives back to back. With four locomotives being used this way and another for the Armoured Engine all five locomotives of the five sets were used.

 

 

The Armoured Engine is made from a locomotive and the coal wagon glued to each other.

 

 

Plenty of camouflage nets were used to disguise the numerous flaws of the original models that are just originally intended as cheap toys.

 

 

The Assault Wagon is made from the junction of two coaches.

 

 

The aerials are metal pieces glued on the roof after drilling holes in that nasty plastic of these kind of toys. Here you have to call all your available patience.

 

 

 

The Artillery wagon has some old soft plastic Atlantic T-34 turrets carved out to look slightly as the original 100mm and 75mm gun turrets.

 

 

The gun tubes are from some old chinese models I had around suitably carved to shape.

 

 

The central turret is made from a 1/43rd rallye car wheel.

 

 

The full set measures almost one meter and now I'm ready to push back 4th Panzer Division at Mokra!!

 

 

Here you can see the two main components of the set: the Chinese models and Evergreen Plastic card.  

 

 

For the Flat Railcar you need to change the place of the wheels and glue some small walls to the sides besides bending the front ramp.

 

 

You can see here the seam of Liquid GreenStuff placed to disguise the junction of the two locomotives on each of the Artillery Wagons.

 

 

 

In all lower parts of the wagons a strip of 1 cm of plastic card was used as the protection of the wheel set.

 

 

More Liquid GreenStuff was used for the joint of the locomotive and coal wagon.

 

 

The ending parts of each of  the Artillery Wagons were true nightmares to convert to the proper shape and so I left them as they were and covered those parts with gauze.

 

 

Mg's were made from surplus Besa Mg's from the PSC A9 Cruiser tanks.  The metal aerials were drilled into the plastic and strenghtened with hot glue and super glue.

 

 

An old half tyre was used as the nose of the locomotive.

 

 

The wire for the aerials is true wire wrapped around each pole.

 

 

Total lenght; 95 cm.

 

 

The original wagons are like this and a lot of work is necessary only to take the adhesive paper out.

 

 

The content of the original box.  

  

And the box interestingly called 'Amry War'. I also think this is a good basis for conversions of ACW, Old West, African, or any other WWI or WW2 trains. You just need to be patient with this kind of plastic and use your imagination.   

 

Next: More Polish stuff, of course!

 

 

Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - Baby Panzersaurus Rex.

After watching the last Jurassic Park on the movies I added some Minairons Pz I A to my  Blitzkrieg Germans. It's my second group of Minairons Pz I, the first being painted as Spanish Civil War insurgents. Only the usual PSC commander and a few antennae were added. 

Rapid Fire! - France 1940 in 20mm - Bunkerknacker!

 

 

As many times happens, Colin and Richard are to blame for this one. The Bunkernacker ('Bufla') shows up with importace in the lists of 1st PD in the RF! Blitzkrieg Battlegroups book. I looked for a proper model to buy and could only find some very expensive die-cast models made in Germany and sold in Czech Republic (or made in Czech Republic and sold in Germany, something like that).

 

 

For this conversion I used  the Airfix model of the 88mm and tractor that was previously destined to be used by the German Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil war.

 

 

The only markings are the Kleist army group symbol, licence plates and the white Balkankreuz.

 

 

The crew are converted hard plastic Matchbox figures. The arms were carved out and Milliput arms were added with plastic 88mm shells included.

 

 

There is a 3mm gap between tracks and main hull that was eliminated with a seam of hot glue .

 

 

The hot glue also makes the model sturdier. If you don't do something like this there will be a big hole that can easily be seen from this angle. I left this one without the brown camouflage for a possible use in the Eastern Front.

 

 

 

The main reference books for this model were Panzerwaffe- The Campaigns in the West by Mark Healy and Case Yellow from Firefly Collection.

 

 

 

The Airfix parts are world wide recognisable sand colour with Evergreen plastic card

in white.

 

   

 

The mantlet has to be cut down to shape and some parts added.

 

 

The rear ammunition baskets were made in another hard styrene I had around.

 

 

All original engine parts should be built and all new structures are glued on top of the original ones. This helps a lot the building process.

 

 

The driver cabin is the biggest effort but as this is a sole child the end result is good enough for me.

 

 

These venerable Matchbox figures ended their artificial carreer in the artillery! The Milliput arms can be seen as well as the 88mm shells (in fact 50mm shells from PSC as the Omaha WN's ate all true 88mm shells I had. The difference is not big because the shells are 1/72nd scale and the figures are 1/76th scale which helps to mask the difference) .

 

 

Next: last S-Models H-39's I needed already arrived, but I'm also inclined to build the artillery group of the Portuguese Brigada Mecanizada for my splendidly humble 2008 series... I will leave it in Jesus hands but as Jesus is my middle name, its in my hands :).  

 

 

Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - Panzer reinforcements sneaking across the border.

Rapidly coming out of the woods of Jour Sans Soleil a German thrust of 15 new models is about to pick the French reservists by surprise. The German High command was worried as in this blog only French and British models were showing up in the last few months and thus it decided on a surprise attack.  

 Models are Zvezda (75mmIG, 20mm AA and Sidecars), BPM (PzIII E), IBG (PzII A)  and Armourfast (Pz IV C).

Armourfast makes these nice PzIV C's. I only added hull Mg, antenna, holding stucture for the spare wheels, picks and shovels (unseen on the other side), stowage and crewman. The detail is getting better at Armourfast but still some important details are missing.

On the contrary of Armourfast the BPM PzIII's bring all details already printed in the models. The detail is not as fine as the plastic models but they are also getting better and better. Additions are the usual crew (old Esci from their King Tiger), stowage and antenna.

The IBG new Pz II A are very accurate and as easy to build as Armourfast even if with more parts to glue. Additions as above with crewman from PSC. These models will join the shelf of the 6th Panzer Division as this early model of the Pz II was still being used alongside the Pz 35(t) in this big unit of the French campaign of 1940.

The 75mm IG of Zvezda had a third crewman from Airfix with new head from PSC as the original head had a canvas cover for later campaigns.

Another of the same extra crew can be seen on this 20mm AA gun stand from Zvezda.

The BMW R-12's from Zvezda are little treasures of plastic engineering. I only took out some of the Mg's and made new arms of Milliput for its crew.

A bird's view of each of the new models.  

Next: Portugal- Iran at 19.00!!! After the Euro Cup, the World Cup will be for Portugal for sure as we are playing the best football ever!

Just kidding...

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day 1944 - Omaha Beach (part 19) - Longues-sur-Mer battery

This is a forgotten model from the Omaha beach series. Its a sinthetique stone model by PN Sud Modelisme that represents one of the six bunkers of the kind in the Omaha/Gold area and includes a resin 152mm Naval gun.

I only added a protective wall made of wood for the back entrance and a camouflage net at the front.

 The only problem of such models is that they have to stay always in the bottom shelf, otherwise you will be out of shelves very quickly...

Next: The Germans mentioned in the previous post.

 

Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - Luftwaffe aircraft

After the French and British  aircraft the Germans are finally arriving, following the historical sequence of events. This small collection of airplanes is odd as the most common types like the Me109 or the Stuka are only one each.

Here you have two Junkers Ju 52 from Italeri, undoubtely better for Holland and Belgium but also true in France.

This is an Altaya Messerschmitt Me110 with blue painted windshields from the inside.

 This is the Messerschmitt Me 109 E painted according to Osprey campaign series 3, France 1940. The model is Airfix.

Another Airfix model, a Junkers Ju87 'Stuka'.

A Matchbox Heinkel He 115. Have no idea what to do with it...

And a Dornier Do 17 also Matchbox.

Next: Probably more German armour for 1940.  

Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - RAF aircraft

Well, nothing that was planned came out and instead some older kits decided to pose for the camera. Here several RAF squadrons pass over the village of Bleu Ciel on the way to another strafing mission. 

This Fairey Battle is an Airfix model. I need to find another one as this light bomber was numerous in the French 1940 campaign. 

The sole Bolton Paul Defiant is an Altaya Die-cast model. I repainted it as the original camouflage was black for night fighting. 

The Hurricanes are clockwise: Airfix, Altaya and Matchbox. I need to find at least one Blenheim bomber and a Lysander for reconnaissance to complete the group of British aircraft for France 1940.

Next: German aircraft for France 1940.