Honsby-Armstrong Artillery Locomotives

This week the Royal Garison Artillery have taken delivery of the first of a new type of machine, the Honsby-Armstrong Artillery Locomotive! Running on endless tracks, and with the power of no less than twenty-four good horses, these fine machines have the capacity to manoeuvre even the heaviest of our guns into position.

Hey Internet,

I do present two Honsby-Armstrong Artillery Locomotives...

The eagle eyed amongst you will, of course, recognise the models to be Soviet WWII era 'Stalinets Tractors'. However, I have cunningly painted the radiator casing, headlamps and doorhandles a brassy-coloured metal colour, flawlessly transporting the machines back in time to turn-of-the-century England!

A gift from a friend who had no use for them, these models had been an unloved part of a Soviet Flames of War force for five years or so. Interestingly, this force had no artillery in need of towing, so they never got used. Not even once.

Coming across them quite by chance recently, I thought they'd be just the ticket for the late-Victorian / Great War-ish project that I am currently working on.

I've had a bit of a play around painting them. Being the first vehicles in this project, I wanted to tie down a number of painting techniques and effects that can then be rolled out across all of the British vehicles for the project.

I had to get the green just right. I wanted that particular shade of pale green used on some British equipment around the time of the Great War.

The colour had to be fairly easy to achieve so that I could paint up a dozen or so tanks and other vehicles in a uniform matter. It took three attempts, but I think that the one that I settled on looks about right.

This was the colour that I was going for.

Other than that, it was the smaller details, but in particular, I wanted to try something different with the windows and headlamps. For a long time I've been painting both in the same way, going for a sort of 'blue gem' effect, but recently I've noticed that, while pretty, the effect is totally overblown and utterly unrealistic.

Instead, the windowpanes have been painted flat black and lightly gloss varnished. I'm quite sold on this look for medium scale models like this.

Hopefully the headlamps are looking more realistic too. With them, I've just done highlighted circles of silver. Looking at the photo above, I can't help but feel that its the way to go, particularly with the big lamps of the first quarter of the century.

Some Blue Moon Mark I Tanks and a pair of Flames of War Tog IIs should be on their way before too long. I'm quite looking forward to giving them the same treatment.

Do let me know what you think, eh?

Mr. Marx.

The Lead Tally - 2014

Acquired: +59       Painted: +69          Total: +9