A 50th Anniversary reissue - A post 1st of April update

Breaking News!

This year it's exactly 50 years since Airfix released their 1/32 scale 'Modern British Infantry', and therefore announces a limited reissue of the set as it can be used alongside Airfix' new 1/35 scale British vehicles from the same period (Alvis FV622, Alvis Stalwart Mk.2, Ferret Scout Car Mk.1 and Mk.2 and Alvis FV 603 Saracen Mk.5):

It's weird to think that this 'modern' set is turning 50, while their WW2 counterparts was only some 30+ when I grew up. This set will later be followed by other limited reissues of 'Modern' Cold War troops like the 'Modern German Infantry'...

...and 'Modern US NATO troops:

There will also be a reissue of a set of 'modern' opponents:

The release dates are not set yet, but all of these sets can be pre-ordered from April 1st. (only)

A post 1st of April update:

Ok, these 'breaking news' didn't seems to fool any readers of this blog. While 'working' with these ChatGPT generated images I was about to fool my self as these are old Airfix figure sets I'd really wish to see re-released again. I wonder if any others felt a slight excitement when seeing these images?

I'm not sure why Airfix has never re-released these figures. I've seen the 'Modern Russians' being sold for over £100 secondhand. Perhaps these are some of the mold which were lost or destroyed after the 'Heller period'?

I did not fool 'Messenger' today either. When writing the URL in a message for my son, this is what the link preview showed:

I really hope that Airfix will re-release these sets one day. If they can.

Give and Take - Combining 2 LGB wagons

Last year I bought several G-scale LGB wagons cheaply second hand for turning them into military rollingstock to run in my 16mm scale German Heeresfeldbahn trains or British WDLR trains. Some of these wagons were pretty 'scruffy'. For this project I pulled 2 wagons out of the pile of well used wagons. Both of them actually belongs to LGB's 'Toy Train Series':

Firstly I couldn't keep that colorful livery on the tank car in a military train where most cars are grey-ish. Besides I didn't like the tank's off center position on the wagon nor the brakeman's platform. -I already have a tank car with a brakeman's platform and wanted this to be different:

The second wagon is actually one of those I least like from the LGB-range and I actually bought it just to get the metal wheels it came with (as they costs about twice as much new than whole this purchase together). I toyed with the idea to replace the wheels with some plastic ones after I removed the metal ones and keep the wagon, give it a repaint and use it. But it was in a very sorrow condition covered in thick house paint, missing a coupling, buffer and it's brakeman's platform railings + one step:

While I was working on this project I found a drawing of a similar wagon in a book about German Heeresfeldbahnen in WWII, and decided to try to get it back in running condition again and use it with my Heeresfeldbahn trains:

As I wrote earlier, both these wagons are from LGB's inexpensive 'Toy Train Series' originally aimed for children's entry to this scale/gauge. I guess LGB made these wagons based upon the same chassis or parts to keeps things 'cheap'. This means that the chassis are interchangeable between the two wagons, meaning that the open plank wagon can be placed on the chassis with the brakeman's platform and steps and the tank car vice versa. Due to this I decided to keep the open plank wagon and remodel it. First I painted both 'tops' in 2 different gray shades...

...before assembling them on the their opposite chassis:

The tank could easily be moved and fixed in a position more to the center of the wagon:

Then I painted the details and gave them a light weathering:

Ironically, while working on this project LGB/ Märklin re-released the same (Toy Train) tank car in grey as one of their 2026 news after been out of production for a while. It has nice lettering and numbering, but costs about 4 times more than my own project. 

On the open plank wagon I picked out some individual boards in different colours to give a hint that some of them have been replaced. Bars, frames and hinges were painted black and everything was given a wash of black and rust and finally drybrushed to look aged:

Since this is the wagon I was initially least found of in the LGB-range, I decided to add some load to it to make it more interesting. It had to be some kind of military cargo and preferably some German ones as I found a German prototype for this wagon. The load was not to be permanently fixed as I wanted it to be interchangeable. A German tank would make a spectacular load, but this was wrong kind of wagon for that. - Besides loads like that are way too heavy and large for narrow gauge railways. But what about parts for a tank that would need to replaced from time to time? Parts like an engine? The Maybach HL230 engine was used in Tiger I, Tiger, II, Panther, Jagdpanther and Jagdtiger tanks and on Thingiverse I found a free kit I re-scaled to 1:19 scale and 3D-printed:

I made 3 kits as this is how many this wagon can carry in both volume and weight (max 5000 kg):

I made a cargo frames for them so they would sit level and fit snuggle into the railway wagon:

Then they were secured to the frame:

I guess this load depicts well used engines going back from the front, or newly overhauled engines going back to the front. Perhaps for a coming (panzer)  offensive? 

So by combining these 2 'Toy Train' wagons by LGB I didn't just get more prototypical wagons for my growing collection of military railway cars, but I also did so in the most budget way possible. So can you, as these Toy Trains wagons are usually very available and cheap second hand. 

If you have rollingstock from LGB, have a look what chassis are the same, how they are 'altered' from the factory and what kind of wagons they fit for. This will allow you to very easily alter and personalize your own LGB stock. What I did in this case was probably the most simple of them.

Modelling-Friends crossed The Rainbow Bridge

We recently had to follow our faithful companion to his last journey over 'The Rainbow Bridge'. Linus was a well-traveled little guy, who loved mountain hikes and wandering along the shore, who loved driving, shopping for toys and who used to go into the local gas station and order a sausage. When going through 'old' photos it seems like he also liked (running) trains and take part in my modelling activities:

Linus overviews the first run and premier of my 16mm scale Heeresfeldbahn

Linus brings his ball to join the games too

Linus takes a look at some new some new acquisitions while running before they're heading off to the 'paint shop' 

Linus are inspecting the progress of the re-modelling of my Radio Controlled Combat Boat 90, and suggesting what photos to include in the blog

Budget Battle Mat approved by Linus

Linus while trying to recreate a drawing I usually use as a 'cover picture' of my annual 'year statistics'. The best photo of him was actually taken before the photoshoot started

Last year another of our long time fur companions crossed The Rainbow Bridge. Sofus did also like to hang around and have a closer look at the modelling activities:

Sofus picks out goods for a wagon in which we were also going to place a couple of miniature black cats 

While searching for these photos I also came by a really old one of our late fur baby Svarten, while he was inspecting the layout construction of my old H0-layout:

There was no blogpost on this layout as it got dismantled long before I start blogging. It looks like Svarten enjoyed it though.

They were all much loved, and will be deeply missed dear Linus, Sofus and Svarten❤️❤️❤️
To honor and remember them I've included a Jack Russell Terrier and 2 Black Cats in my military Garden trains:

Fly High and Run Free and Wild, Boys!!

Really large scale wargaming

Even if blogposts have kept coming through February and March, the truth is that I have been really busy in my real life for several weeks with military service on a NATO exercise in 'Northern Norway'. Due to the current global situation I'm not going to share any photos or information from it this time. Just giving my readers and fellow bloggers an explanation why (accumulated) posts has been coming at the same time as I have not commented actively on other's blogs. There has simply not been time for it for a while.

Anyhow, now I'm back to my (unclassified) miniature service and wargaming again. I've missed a couple of model railway shows I intentionally planned to visit and a garden railway running session in the meantime thoug.

The photos in this blogpost are outdated and taken 10 years ago during exercise Cold Response 2016.

Close Encounter in the 'Dawn of Man'

In 2023 I made a scenario and played a prehistoric 'fantasy' wargame between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals using my own house rules. Is it possible to create a scenario for en even earlier period than this 'prehistoric' game?

In 2024 I made a 54mm 'Ape Army' for Sci-fi and Fantasy wargames. Even If my Apes depicts 'Chimpanzees' I envision that they also could substitute for early Hominids in the 'Dawn of Man', like those in the beginning of '2001 - A Space Odyssey' too. In that movie the evolution accelerates when the Hominids receives a Monolith from space some 4 million years ago, and they learn to develop tools and weapons. -Not only for hunting, but to battle each others as well. What if these early Hominids eventually got armed with simple spears not only received a 'monolith' from space, but actually got into a close and violent encounter with aliens armed with high tech weapons? -That could be an interesting scenario for another prehistoric Sci-fi/Fantasy wargame.

I don't have many 'alien' miniatures either, but I made some 'V'-miniatures last year. Like the early Hominids there aren't detailed records of the "Visitors" history either and all we actually 'know' is that they're from the 4th planet from Sirius in the 'Canis Major' constellation. They're a militaristic race of reptilian aliens, who travel to stars and plunder other worlds. We don't know how old their world is, and for how long they have been space travelling and plundered other planets. So for the scenario for this wargame I presupposes that they had such technology and were performing such activities at the same time as the 'Dawn of Man' on earth.

I had almost everything needed to play this game at hand, but decided go fancy and 3D-print and paint a 'Monolith' to set the scene:

The Rules

For this little skirmish game I wanted to combine FUBAR 4th Edition with FUBAR Dark Fantasy, as they have (almost) similar Core Rules. Close Combat and morale rules are slightly different between them, and are played as FUBAR 4th edition. I'll use FUBAR Dark Fantasy for the Hominids due to their melee weapons, and FUBAR 4th edition for the "Visitors" due to their ranged weapons and body armour. Their laser rifles are treated as 'assault rifles' according to the rules. 

However, some house rules seemed necessary; I guess early Hominids are 'comparable' with modern Chimanzees which are very fast, so I let them move 8" insted of 6". They also have brutal strength, a strong bite and deadly teeth, so I think they will be far superior to the reptiles in hand-to-hand combat, so they get to improve their expertise with +1 in melee for their physical strength and another +1 for their 2 handed spear.

The Scenario

About 4 million years ago an alien space-ship on their way home to their planet after a plundering raid on another planet, experienced technical difficulties when passing our solar system. The technical challenges resulted in that they needed to drop their loot from one of their cargo bays.

The dropped loot was valuable hard drives from another ancient world, and salvage patrols was eventually sent from this reptilian's home planet near Sirius to see if this loot could be found and salvaged. Several patrols searched through our solar system to see if the hard drives could be found by smaller crafts and recovered by larger vessels. 

One of these smaller 'Search and Rescue' patrols were searching planet earth. When passing the area we know as the African continent, they spotted an objective which could be one of the hard drives. They decided to land to have a closer look before contacting their Motherships and report their possible find...

Forces:

• The Shock Troopers:
• 1 squad of 2 fireteams:
• Fireteam 1: 2 troopers with High-Output Energy Rifles (like assault rifles according to the rules) and 1 trooper with a heavy laser blaster (like a LMG in the rules)
• Fireteam 2: 2 troopers with High-output Energy Rifles (like assault rifles according to the rules) and 1 trooper with laser launcher (rocket launcher in the rules).
• The Shock Troopers have body armour which will save on 5+ and are 'Veterans'.

• The Hominids are not 'organized' but fights as 3 groups of 5 each. They have not yet developed the capacity of throwing their spears, so they can only use them for thrusting. They will fight as 'Seasoned and their  experience gains a +2 in melee. They have no armour but will save on a +6 due to a 'stray shot'.

Mission:

• The Shock Troopers: To gain access to the 'monolith' for one turn to decide if it's a rock or if it's one of the lost hard drives.
• Hominids: They see the 'Visitors' as invaders and a threat to their tribe, and will try to eliminate them.

AAR

Time:    30 minutes

Turns:   3 (!)

Result:  Hominids victory

A 'Search and Rescue' Skyfighter flies by an object and decides to take a closer look at it from the ground:

When the Skyfighter lands the crew disembarks, and then they sees that the objekt is surrounded by some sorts of primates:

The Shock Troopers does not know if the inhabitants of this planet are friendly or not. It doesn't look like they have any advanced technology or weapons.The Shock Troopers goes on guard to see how the primates acts:

One group of Hominids rush against the strangers, and it becomes clear to the Shock Troopers that they are not friendly and they opens fire:

And makes one hit, which is 'pinned':

Then a second group of Hominids hastes against the other group of strangers. It's very clear that they have no friendly intentions with this behavior and the Shock Troopers opens fire:

This group of Shock Troopers also have a heavy blaster:

The Shock Troopers tries to hold the Hominids on a distance by heavy fire, but the Groups of Hominids just don't seems to care and and now a third group of Hominids joins the battle. How long can the Shock Troopers hold them back:

Not very long. Despite some hits, none of them were critical and the Hominids didn't seems to care and they rushed into an assault on a group of Shock Troopers:

It's a fierce melee and casualties on both sides, but it still looks like the Hominids have the upper hand:

The second group of Hominids also rush into an assault on the Shock Troopers:

And it's a brutal melee with casualties on both sides:

Finally the first group of charging Hominids have killed all the Shock Troopers in close combat with no further casualties:

That alien gunner is a though one, and really  hold his ground in the close combat for another turn:

-Until the third group of Hominids also made an assault and joined the close combat agains the last alien. Even if he was a brave alien, he was chanceless against this horde:

This was an victory for the Hominids. They tried to enter the space craft, but didn't manage to open it.

While on their way back to their 'base' they heard a nose from above. On the sky they could see another similar ship as the one they just abounded, but it didn't land as the first one. It just opened fire and destroyed the first ship, so the 'enemy' wouldn't take advantage of their advanced technology. They did not have intention to land in a such hostile environment...

... at least, not yet. Perhaps they would come back to this planet in the future better prepared for battle: