I did some more work on the MS Louisa as a Auxiliary Gunboat. Named VP 1037.
Here are some pictures of the build and primed model:
The weapons are as usual from Warlord and Heroic&Ros.
More to come when painting is finished. If interested in a copy ,I Will list the ship here when ready.
Next up will be a Typ VIIc U Boat….
I finished the parts of the steamer Bellota in the last days and did the molds yesterday. Here are the components of the ship:
These parts are cast separately to be able to use the hull for different layouts and to make the individual molds smaller.
This is what the steamer looks like:
And here is a size comparison with a warlord vosper hull:
As you see it is quite big but not as big as the trumpeter liberty ship. More when the first parts are cast. Hopefully tonight.
As I started with cruel Seas ( see last post) , I decided that I would need more costal steamers for convoys. One tanker is not enough. Therefore i started to look for old plans of coastal steamers in the WWW.
As i often travel to the north sea island Borkum I started to look for plans of old steam ships with brought the tourists over to the island during the 1930-1940. These ships were called “Bäderschiffe” in German. I found plans for the steamship Rheinland with was build in 1926.
The Rhineland was build at the Vulcan ship builders at Hamburg. She was 57m long and 8,7 m wide. She could carry 613 passengers and had overnight accommodation for the crew. She had two engines reaching 12,5 knt. She was coal fired.
This postcard shows the Rheinland after 1933 as she shows the banner ” Kraft durch Freude” in front of the bridge.
The Rheinland serviced the line between Emden and Borkum and Borkum-Helgoland as well as Helgoland-Hamburg. During the second world war she serviced this line and was used to ferry refugees through the baltic sea. She was used until 1968 . In 1960 she was rebuild and looked very differently from what you see above.
Above are some old postcard pictures of the steamer. the color picture shows her sometime after 1933 as the bridge looks different after 1933.
I will build her as she looked when brand new in 1929.
As usual I use cardboard and extruded polystyrene for my model building. Here are some pictures of the building process so far . Oh, I forgot to tell, the model is in 1/300 or 6mm , the scale of Cruel seas. The model could be used as a Sperrbrecher or similar war time use in the games.
And a picture with a Vosper from Warlord for size comparison:
Here is the APC “Ziege” of the first Gruppe. It will be run as a Chimera in Warhammer 40K games. The vehicle is scratch build from extruded polystyrene .
And with vehicle commander :
And the complete Gruppe with APC:
For your convenience here are some pictures repeated from older posts showing the different stages of the build:
I did some more work on my Thunderhawk gunship over the last weeks .
I did some more work on the underside of the fuselage and the main wings and engines.
I added the attack wings  which are magnetized to make them movable. Here is a short video about the attack wings moving:
Here are a few pictures of the gunship. The weapons and landing gear are still missing.
Here is the Landinggear:
And here is what it looks like at the moment:
The 4 twin heavy bolsters at the nose of the fuselage and under the main wings as well as the hell strike missiles are still missing. When these are added a first basecoat of a mixture of PVA and paint will be applied to harden the polystyrene. Then I will add rivets and screws and then painting will start. So a lot more work to do but I think most of the work has been done.
Yesterday I did the first test with my Thunderhawk on my gaming table. I test fitted the main wings, which are not completed yet. Furthermore I build a flying base from extruded polystyrene. The gunship is fitted to the stand with magnets so that different stands can be used too. When the gunship is finished it will also have retractable landing gear , which at the moment isn’t fitted yet.
As I have quite a few Primaris Space Marines in my army and you can only use the new repulsortank as transport I thought about getting a Thunderhawk gunship as a transport as it is the only other vehicle you can use in Warhammer 40K to get your Primaris Marines transported.
I always wanted to have one in my collection. Way back in the 1990’s I considered one too for my Space Wulf army I used to have. But the price tack at Forgeworld was just to high then and it is still today. There is no way paying 450 British pounds for a single model! So how to get on of these:
There is a Facebook group called papercraft poorhammer modelling were you can get templates to build your own paper models from. As paper is, as far as I think, not sturdy enough for gaming I used the templates to build my own Thunderhawk from extruded polystyrene . I have a proxxon foam cutter which is used for architectural models and which I have used for terrain building till now. I have a few mdf additions for this machine for cutting angles and round objects from Gerard Boom. You will find him at Crisis for example.
So here is the beginning of my own Thunderhawk :
This is the main body as a basic shape.
Here you see the basic wing assembly.
This are the styrodur ( extruded polystyrene )parts for the engines. On the right picture is the mdf part which helps to cut out round shapes.
Here the engines are added to the wings . All basic shapes . Fillerwork and sanding has to take place yet.
And this is how far I got this weekend. From start to this stage it took about 10 hours building time. Most time was used to find out how to use the templates to build with extruded polystyrene . The detail work will start in the next days. So watch this space for an update.
What I forgot to tell you , the version of the Thunderhawk I am building is no longer available at Forgeworld, they have a new slightly different Thunderhawk model now for sale.
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