Recently I found a great offer in my local hobby shop, half price on a Roco German flatcar loaded with two small trucks from WWII.
The trucks were called originally made by Krupp and was used throughout the war as troop carriers, telephone truck, staff car or towing various guns.
Right out of the box the model looked very plastic-like, shiny and new. The two Krupp trucks were painted in what was supposed to be late-war German camo, but looked rather unconvincing with harsh colours.
The trucks are, however, quite nice models despite their tiny size in 1:87 scale. The wheels are made from real rubber and pops off easily for painting.
The trucks come with a number of additional detailing parts, which really add a lot to the models.
All the tiny bits in place! The windows on both trucks were placed at a rather odd angle, so I broke them off and reattched them at a proper angle.
Here is the small 1:87 scale truck model from Roco next to a 1:35 model from Tamiya, I built some years ago. The level of detail is actually very close!
The next part of the project was the flatcar itself. The car from Deutsche Reichsbahn is of type R Stuttgart and has number 22 911.
The flatcar got a couple of dark acrylic washes to add some definition, and tan drybrush to enhance the details and finally dusty weathering powder from Bragdon Enterprises. The lower part of the car first received a dark wash and then rusty weathering powder.
The model came with a number of side supports. Before detailing the model, I spend some time looking at old images of German rail transport during WWII, and it seemed that the supports were typically very worn and uneven in number on the real cars. Some even had holes in them, perhaps from bullets?
So I used a tiny drill and a file to make the supports look old and worn, and only placed a few of them.
The two Krupp trucks were both painted German Grey, shaded and highlighted before getting a layer of dusty weathering powder. I didn’t want to overdo the weathering since I imagine their crews might have done some maintenance before departure.
On some of the old images of rail transport, each car seemed more like a camping site than a military transport. Some soldier spend days or even weeks getting to the front on railcars, so naturally they tried to make their ride as comfortable as possible with tents, clothesline to dry socks, small stoves etc.
The company Preiser had a nice set of resting German troops, and I added a figure to each truck, symbolising the driver, along with some sacks, crates etc.
The models from Roco are very nice, and with some time and careful attention, the model turns into a small diorama. Perhaps I should make the whole train?
Epoch 