Bob Letterman said:Hi all,
I have decided to consolidate all my threads involved with the large diorama, Logistics, into five specific ones. The base and buildings, the soft skin vehicles, the armor vehicles, the Rail road models and the figures. I will leave all the old threads where they are, but I will post the original topics here. Sorry, to include all your comments/responses would be way above my pay grade. When I do an update from now on, I will put them in the new threads. This topic will eventually include ALL soft skinned vehicles in the diorama.
First, the old topics.
Here are two of the 9 deuce and a halfs that will be in logistics. One a soft cab (Tamiya) the other a hard cab, (Italeri) both are built and pics of before and after painting.
Hard cab
Soft cab
After base coat
After base coat
I intend to put full, but varying loads in all of them from various companies and from making the loads at home.
The Diamond T
One of the vehicles in the new diorama will be a Roy Brand Diamond T Wrecker. As the diorama will also have a deuce and a half column, normally there were always wreckers roving around. I have had this kit for about 6 years and never opened it. About 3 weeks ago I decided to get started and opened it up. OMG! the pattern work was fine, but the casting was absolutely the worst I have ever seen. Here are some pics in progress. It is up to the point of painting and weathering now.
There are a lot of parts for a resin kit, plus plastic and brass home made parts to replace the ones that were unusable and to add detail.
I modified the Tamiya machine gun ring mount to fit
Some of the winch was unusable so I replaced them with plastic. The treadplate on the fendors needed replacing as well.
I used some Skybow tool holders to replace the kit ones. I had to replace the entire windshield assembly and added a siren which many of the Diamond Ts were equipped with in the field.
In the lower right hand corner of this picture, you can see the kit grill. In my estimation, nobody could clean that up. OK, if you can, you have a hell of a lot more patience than I do!
Ditto headlight guards. Still working on the one.
As the machine gun mount was added and the month of the setting is April, I decided roll up the top canvas and strap it to the support. I have several reference photos that show this was a common practice in the ETO.
The D-7 Caterpillar The D-7 is built, (In subassemblies) and then base coated. The next step is assembly, weathering and final detailing, in that order.
Trailers and Jeeps
I needed 6 trailers for the dio, Logistics and 5 jeeps. I will also be adding an armored ammo trailer here as well. The pics are of the jeeps and trailers built before base coating, then all painted.
The new stuff as of August 10th. I'll start the update with the Dodge ambulance. This is the old Italeri kit, updated with parts from the Skybow/AFV club Dodge WC parts and some PE.
This is a pretty much OOB Tamiya GMC that I added the Tamiya .50 cal. MG and turret ring.
This is a Tamiya kit using the Trakz Tipper dump conversion and the Trakz canvas top for the cabin.
This is another Tamiya GMC, this one with a Tamiya 50 cal. MG/Turret ring and a Trakz canvas cargo and cab cover.
This is an Italeri hard cab conversion with the newer Tamiya GMC.
This is the single Studebaker cargo truck that will be in the convoy. I was concerned about using this for awhile. Later, research proved they were absolutely used in all the express routes throughout the ETO, albeit in small numbers. (For any skeptics out there, I have proof, photographic and otherwise!)
This is the later limited issue hard cab Italeri GMC w/MG and turret ring. Mostly oob with a little PE here and there.
This is the most converted of the GMCs. A Tamiya GMC, w/Trakz cabin canvas top with a scratched rear end to convert it to the gasoline tanker version. I made the oval forms, connected them into two separate tanks and used very thin styrene to skin them. David Doyle, the author of dozens of research books on soft skins and armor and his friends helped me with photos and data on this one. I was looking through all my parts stashes to find the 43 jerry cans required to fill the racks on both sides. I used PE from the ABER kit here and there, Made inset door handles on the boxes containing the fuel hoses on both sides of the tanks. A piano hinge was used at the top of each and I used brass rod scored with a hobby knife to simulate those.
On this version, the underslung spare tire is replaced by a small storage box, and another box, directly behind the cab holds the spare.
Again, I used the Trakx canvas cab top. It is much better than the one supplied with the kit!
I see no reason to individually post all these vehilcles after a base coat of O.D. (In various slightly different shades, which do not show up well in these photos), so I thought I would throw in all of them so far. Only four soft skins remain to be built, three more jeeps and a 3/4 ton Dodge command car for General Patton. All the armor will be in another post!
I now have several vehicles close to being finished. This gasoline trailer is the first totally completed. There will be seven trailers, this one being the most weathered, the rest from almost new and all stages in between.
Here are the built and base coated soft skins in a group. It may not look like it, but there are a total of 20 kits in the following three photos. 8 GMCs of various types, 1 Studebaker cargo, 1 Diamond T wrecker, 3 Cargo trailers, 3 Gasoline trailers, 1 Dodge ambulance, 1 D-7 Caterpillar dozer, and 2 jeeps.
OK, That is it so far. I have the destroyed and burned Mercedes truck/Search light unit which is nearing completion and will be in the "I hate flying thingies" GB within the next week!
I preferred to put all these into a single post because, particularly in the initial phases, they are a little boring.
Bob
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