Merry Christmas and a good start into 2018

I wish you all wonderful Merry Christmas and a perfect 2018.

May all your wishes come through.

regards

Thomas

1/144 Mercedes leichtes Löschgruppenfahrzeug LLG

For my own collection I finished last night the painting for the Mercedes fire engine. I have the Wehrmacht version in yellow but I wanted it as an civilian one too. The Mercedes was called leichtes Löschgruppenfahrzeug LLG, today it would be a LF8; a Löschfahrzueg for 8 firemen. Besides Opel many LF 8 have been produced on the chassis of the Mercedes L1500.  For more details you can read here

1/144 Mercedes Fire engine

1/144 Mercedes Fire engine

1/144 Mercedes Fire engine

the new Kettenkrad and his special trailers

Two years ago I bought several Me 262 from Trumpeter as together with the Jet fighter you found a Kettenkrad in the box. I assembled one, but I never painted it. So this autumn I got a complete box of Me 163 and there you find a VW Kübelwagen and a Kettenkrad, both need only assembly they come ready painted. So I assembled one and the Kübelwagen and was very astonished how easy it was. 
So I started designing some of the special trailers the Wehrmacht used for the Kettenkrad.
A Kettenkrad in 1/144 is already very small and fragile, but the trailers are even one step fragiler. Therefore I designed everything for the ultra frosted material, it allows me dimensions from 0.5mm. Last weekend I picked it up and here are the first pictures:

  

new Monster from Metal Troops in 1/144

More by accident then by planned research I found this new Monster from Metal Troops. Remember they offered some years ago the Dora, the biggest train gun and now they come again with a gun. It is a German 35.5 cm super heavy Howitzer, only six of them have been built in WWII. Most of the were used in the East.

So here some prictures from their Twitter account:

new stuff for Thanksgiving - new 1/144 tanks

Okay my plan to publish the new stuff right for Thanksgiving failed. And it failed totally. Besides the fact that I had lee time this week to do any drawings I had problems with the Maus special train trailer. I had to correct a mistake which Shapeways found, but  fore some reasons I do not found the root course. So this took me two evenings until I found the (stupid) mistake today. 

So, for the rest of the Thanksgiving weekend I will offer you the opportunity to order now.

First new model is the Opel Blitz, but not the 150 th. version, no, I designed it with the Einheitsführerhaus, a very primitive wooden cabin which by end of the war all truck producers had to use, so that they saved metal. 

Opel Blitz with standard cabin

Based on this standard cabin I decided to go with the next version I never saw either in 1/144 nor on Shapeways for any other scale:

The Opel Blitz with Einheitsführerhaus and Holz Vergasser. So what was this? With the wooden cabin they saved metal, with the Holzvergaser they tried to save gas. The problem was, that you had to carry a lot of wood to burn it, what reduced the space and weight you could carry. Therefore the Wehrmacht used these trucks only behind the front lines and only for less important transport jobs.

Opel Blitz mit Holzvergaser

Then I designed something more for me, the train station in El Alamein, that is in Aegypt, close to Cairo and was the turning point in Rommel's last attempt to sieg in Africa.

train station

This design is made in full coloured sandstone

Flak trailer Drilling 144 002

This new trailer with two AA Flak Drillings will come soon.

And for some of my very best customers and only on request I will print:

  

This is a special 14 axis train trailer, used by the German Reichsbahn to transport the super heavy Maus tank to Böblingen and to Kummersdorf.

some progress with my German field fortification

Last week I found enough time to close the work on the landscape. So the Basics are done and now I will continue with the details and the stuff to be presented. To get a better image I put some potential guns on it. Of Course and that was the main idea from the beginning I added the 1/144 Heeresfeldbahn, that was a narrow gauge Train the Germans used on many theaters. In the next weeks I will publish more stuff for the German Heeresfeldbahn, like a complete Train, and some rail sets, everything in 1/144.

field fortification with 88mm Flak 43 and range finder 

the new commander in Chief inspects this area of the Atlantic wall

the bunker for the range finder

parallel I tried something new, more but that soon

new 1/144 diorama, German open field fortification

I started this week again with a new Diorama. I will build something with an open field fortification. I have some ideas in my mind but yet not the final design. So I started with one of the old wooden Frames I took back from California. Basement is foarm which I cut an started forming some Details.

empty 1/144 diorama 

For the frame I use one of the old black boxes I bought some years ago, still have tons of them.

the foam can be formed with a screwdriver, some old blades and other sculpting tools

my 1/144 Diorama after half a day work

first painting, no the green will not stay

American and German landing crafts: Pionierlandungsboot versus LCM

Here some pictures from the American and the German version of a landing craft. While the German version is a bit older, the Americans started much later in the war with their design for landing crafts (what does not mean, that they started from scratch).

The Pionierlandungsboot 39 could be easily divided into two pieces and then transported by train, the Americans designed their LCM as a one hull solution.

Pionierlandungsboot 39 and LCM

Pionierlandungsboot 39 and LCM front side view

Pionierlandungsboot 39 and LCM with open ramps

Pionierlandungsboot 39 and LCM side view

Pionierlandungsboot 39 and LCM back view

Pionierlandungsboot 39 and LCM

Pionierlandungsboot 39 and LCM side view

Italien Field Fortification, Bunker in Calabria

While on Holidays the last two weeks, I found something very nice. A small Italian Bunker, not very strong, not very comfortable, but somehow interesting. We saw several of them parallel the coast line.
More 1/144 stuff will follow as soon as I have time to paint them.

German Einheitsdiesel as Radio truck with trailer

I combined my new radio truck with an old trailer which I had for several years. Now behind the radio truck it looks not that bad, therefore I decided to create a set.

Marineartilleriefährprahm 3D

It is done!

My birthday present is ready. I finished work on that project. While it took me more than 2,5 years to finish the Siebel Kampffähre, I can say the Artilleriefährprahm was done in less than 6 months. End of october I will get Prahm number two and then I will start painting the second one with a camouflage schema.