Christmas Modelling (1/35)

Besides celebrating Christmas and spending time with the family I've had some time at the work bench. Subjects of the Christmas attention were my Schöma gas generator loco and a Danish army lorry.

I'm preparing the 3D-printed Schöma loco for fitting of the BullAnt I have ordered from Australia. To add strength to the loco's frame I fitted brass bars to the frame's end plates. They also add weight to the loco. More weight will be added later when I have determined how much room the drive unit, decoder and light arrangement takes up.

Like a turtle... The Schöma is having its frame reinforced.

Close up of the operation: the brass bar will provide strength to the frame and prevent the front plate from deforming. I have no experience with 3D-prints' long term stability and I like to be prepared for all eventualities.

The army lorry is an addition to a recovery column I started building a few years ago. So far the column isn't too long, comprising only two vehicles; a CMP with scratch built generator and a Scammell recovery truck.  Most Danish army lorries in the years after the second world war were equipment drawn from the British army's surplus. The lorry I'm building at the moment is a Bedford QL from a IBG kit. Large numbers of this type of lorry came to Denmark after the war. Most were in need of repairs after use in the war, some even had bullet holes in their bodywork. The 1:35 kit assembles with no fuss and I really like to build a kit out of the box now and then.

The chassis of the QL assembled and primed. The cargo bed with a load of spare wheels isn't quite as progressed. The two sitting figures are from Ultracast (figures 35011 and 35036) and very nice. In the fifties the Danish army uniform relied heavily on garments donated by the British army, so WW2 figures in British uniforms only need minor modifications to pass for Danish squaddies. The beret was only introduced into the Danish army in 1958 (in armoured troops) but I really thought it going too far to replace them with forage caps.

I intend to make the recovery column  a little longer in the coming years. Hopefully with two more CMPs to make the column a bit more uniform. Some day, on a stretch of road parallel to the gravel line, you might see the column pause during one of the early Cold War's many manoeuvres in the woods around Nystrup and Skovby.

The Scammell recovery lorry built from an Accurate Armour resin kit in 2008. The Danish army had a few of these imposing vehicles of unmistakably British design. My model still lacks Danish army decals - which are currently being designed.