A train for my Bunker

Hi,

here a first update on my experience to build a train in the scale 1-144. I will paint everything in the next days and will add some more details and hope it will look not too bad.

Bunker for ammunition and a German Bunker train, all in 1-144

let's call it part II

Today I can present some first pictures.

First pictures shows everything in a very early state. The rails are small plastic pieces, 1x 1 mm and the tracks are cut of these sticks you get in all coffee shops. The foundation is soft foam.

The Bunker presents the smallest version the Germans used to storage ammunition.

Here you see ore or less the stand of today.

My Bunker is read and waits for the first delivery of ammunition. But at the moment I still work on the trains and the waggons. Oh yes the train will be a narrow gauge train of something between 600 and 750 mm. The Germans used both and in the Nedderlands or in Denmark you can find big strongpoints where they used trains.

As the road crosses my railway, I had to make my own crossing point. In one of the next days I will add a bit green to my diorama and hopefully the train will get done.

Bunker for ammunition and a German Bunker train, all in 1-144

Honestly, at the moment it’s only work in progress. My Bunker is ready, painted and everything installed. The rails are well done too but – yes my train that should bring all these boxes to my bunker is not ready. I have a small train, but the wheels and the rest are still missing. I tried some proposals but all do not look that great. I will post in the next days some pictures, so please come back to see who far I will come until the weekend.

Italian Dessert Fort in 1-144

It took me a long time to get this diorama finally finished. But after several changes and a lot of modifications of the original plan - it is done.

Today I went to a local playground to make some pictures in the bright sun and of course in the right surrounding, the sand.

For the Front door I used coated foam and the buildings are done by one prototype, casted with gypsum and then modified. All tanks are from Panzer Depot and the Italian soldiers are the German Train Gun Crew with new arms and some other changes. Oh and yes, I checked it; the Italians had really blue trousers. I hope you like my latest diorama.

While they got one new tank, they try to get the older one running again.

 

The backside of the diorama:

 

 In the playground the diorama has good chances to get lost.

Some Bunkers in 1/144 at my own Atlantic Wall

Some years ago I was lucky to win a really nice and professional made diorama at ebay.
The diorama shows some German bunkers at a beach. I just added some American tanks and one German anti tank gun.

Panzerfähre across the river Seine

The Defeat of the German Panzerarmee 1944
After D-Day, the German Panzers knew only one way, the way back. The positive aspect was, it made the supply line shorter, the bad point was a lot of bridges and railway lines were destroyed either by the US-Air Force or by the French Résistance.
The idea to build a diorama with a German Panzergruppe on a ferry, came as I found an article about the German retreat from France. During the return the Germans had to pass over a lot of rivers. One major problem was the river Seine.
In one of my French magazines, there were some nice pictures of the different types of ships the Germans used. Actually you could say, everything able to swim, was used.
From local ferries up the several German MFP (Marine Fährprahm) everything was more than welcome.
As the maximum seize of any of my dioramas is related to the shoe boxes I use for later storage, the size would be 21 x 27 cm, or just DIN A4. (Very similar to the American Letter size)
So I wanted to show a ferry coming to the banks, where the Panzers would wait.
For the Panzers I decided to go with some Panthers.
Besides the German tank crew from Preiser, everything else is from Dragon.
The Panthers got some add-ons as radio antennas, side protections, and some spare wheels on their turrets. The side protection is made with thin plastic sheets, the radio antennas are taken from a brush. All trees are hand-made. For the water surface I used acrylic paint from the local home depot.

The ferry is hand-made too, I searched some time on the internet for pictures of old ferries and together with the pictures from that french magazine I made some hand sketches how it should look. The basic is just a piece of wood, covered with some plastic sheets.

One year Tea and Tank Blog

Today it is one year ago that I started with this blog. In the meantime more than 600 people stopped and took a look. So I have to say thanks for taking a look at my blog.

As I saw that a lot of the first posts no longer work, I'm in the process to update them all. I hope I will be able to find all the original pictures I had posted before.