Started working on some of the smaller details on the locomotive and tender, adding buffers, armour plates for the buffers, boiler hatches, chimney, and driver cab windows.





As a mockup this works pretty well and allows me, using the Flattery plugin, to unfold the outer surfaces and create a mesh that I can print out - initially using a card template to check that the shells will fit the running gear and won't too look out of scale on the track, and then to cut out the main plasticard panels. Smaller details like inspection hatches and armour strips can be drawn in Photoshop and printed out later as they will be flat and simply cut out of thin plasticard and glued into place on the main surfaces. Here's the locomotive main shell flattened out:

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Not much progress today, decided to add some track to the model and duplicate the tender (the real train had two tenders, one behind the locomotive and one in front), and add a rough camo texture to the armour plates. Once the chassis frame and buffers are added it will look a lot better, hopefully I'll progress with that tomorrow, and if there's time also add some of the larger hatches and the driver windows and vision slits.

Combining my interest in WW2, and my son's model railway, I've decided to build a WW2 era German Panzerzug train that can run on OO gauge tracks. My plan is to build a running train, utilising a second hand loco chassis (still scouring ebay for one that isn't too pricey) and axles (either new or stripped from damaged wagons), along with plasticard. I could make it easy and simple and convert an existing plastic kit but that's horrendously expensive. Available HO train kits tend to be resin based and cost a fortune. Scratchbuilding the should be pretty cheap, and allows for more customisation of the wagons to include. Who knows, maybe a Leopold railway gun will be included at some point in the future

First problem was finding blueprints of the locomotive and carriages, after a bit of digging around I managed to track down a copy of the Waldemar Trojca Panzerzug BP42/BP44 book which contains a few...

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I just couldn't leave it alone again. This time I decided that the shoulders needed a little something, and I ended up adding some pauldrons.



Other than magnetising the weapons the Dreadknight is (at least for the moment!) complete.

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One day on and I decided I didn't like my first attempt at the Dreadnought style torso. After grabbing my FW MKIV GK Dreadnought and putting it side-by-side with the Dreadknight I realised that the "sarcophogus" was too small. So with my trusty Oyumaru thermosetting plastic I set out to replicate the FW Dreadnought torso onto the Dreadknight. After 3 failed attempts (not enough GS the first time, too much the second, knocked it while setting for the third and distorted it badly, grr!) I now have a torso I'm happy with.

The armour panels were pressed separately to make it easier to mount to the body.

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