From LGB 'ToyTrain System' to G-scale Heeresfeldbahn rollingstock

To expand my large-scale Heeresfeldbahn beyond the 3 wagons Incuded in the starterset, I found some inexpensive goods-wagons from the LGB's ToyTrain line. They were very colorfull and like the name indicated, toylike and needed to be 'militarized' to suit my purpose.

I've also been upgrading my aged FlashForge Finder 3D-printer to a FlashForge Adventurer 3 recently, and it really improved the overall print quality I think. Even if I bought it second hand, the new printer is very much value for money and are not very expensive even if you goes for a completely new one. Being goods-wagons, I tink they needed to be loaded with some 'military-goods', so to break my new 3D-printer in and get to know it, I printed some items to use as loads:

Despite of LGB's general 1:22,5 scale, my locomotives are built to 1:19th scale. Vehicles in 1:19 scale are rare and very expensive. 1:18 vehicles are more common and close enough in scale. Too bad many diecast cars in 1:18th scale are also usually very pricey, and especially military ones, but I found a couple of 1:18th scale toycars second hand I got for just about $69/£54 together. Despite being slightly over-scale, postwar and their civilian appearance, the very same type of vehicles were used by German forces during WWII (even on the eastern front), so they'll make a suitable loads in 16mm with new paintjobs.

While working on this project, I also found a cheap 1:18th scale BMW motorcycle for only $11. As the cars, it is actually a post war model but looks very like the older models used in WWII. I'll see if I can give it a convincing backdating as well.

This was very colorful so new paint was needed. It only came with 4 stakes when I bought it, so I kept it that way so it would look slightly different from the other wagons of the same type. I just re-positioned them. I placed the motorcycle pictured above as a load after cutting the windscreen away, changing the seat with some 3D-printed ones and painting it 'German Grey'.

This is the same car as the previous, but I think the numbers of stakes looked a bit 'overkill'. Perhaps it's needed if carrying long loads like logs etc. but for these smaller loads I thinks it's looked better if I removed some of the stakes. The observant reader may notice some 3D-printed parts for a Kettenkrad in this blogpost's 3rd photo. It was originally a 28mm wargame model I just resized to 1:19th scale, printed, painted and added some few more details to it. 8345 Kettenkrads was made during WWII. Did I mention I like motorcycles??

This wagon is just repainted and had one of the repainted 1:18 dicast car loaded to it. My Heeresfeldbahn rake looks like it's 'just been primed' or like '50 shades of grey' so I decided to add some 'kind of more color' to it, by giving the vehicles some different colors than the 'standard grey'. Some 688 VW 82/E Geländekäfer; Beetle body on Kübelwagen chassis were made for the German armed forces. 

This is exactly the same type of wagon as the previous one, so to make it slightly different I made it look revised and a 'modernized' version of the former by changing from spoked to disc-wheels and giving it a more refreshed grey-paintjob not looking so aged as the previous. Actually I did almost no weathering to it at all, and when bringing it to running sessions I was frecently asked when I was going to finish it. - So I gave it a dirty, brownish wash, just to tone the 'fresh grey' down. It's also had one of the 1:18th scale toycars added as a load after being repainted to suitable colors. Citroën Traction Avant was an innovative vehicle with front wheel drive and ground clearance enough to see service with the French army, Wehrmacht and The French resistance. Beside those vehicles seized by Wehrmacht after occupying France in 1940, another 4722 Citroën Tractions was built for Wehrmacht service, and they saw service on all fronts including in Stalingrad. Between 1934 - 1957 more than 760 000 were built in total. 

I think this looks like an old wagon and to 'backdating it' I changed the disc-wheels with spoked ones, as trying to paint it to an aged look. I have a friend who is facinated by open cars with figures placed in them often suggested to be partying and similar. I'm not sure if this is 'a thing', but such wagons can often be found on G-scale layouts on model railway exhibitions we have been visiting (mostly in Germany). As this is a German train and I'm often visiting this friend for running sessions in his garden, I would try to make such a theme in this open wagon as well trying to make it suitable for the train, theme and period though. Their pets, the black cats, are a homage to our own pets 'Svarten' and 'Sofus'.

Lesson learned and a warning...

When repainting the VW and Citroën I wanted to recreate a feeling of spraypainting with 'soft edges' in the camouflagepattern. To do this I used 'soft' modeling-clay as a mask to shape the camouflagepattern and spraypaint it with rattlecans (as this will give soft edges). So far, so good:

When removing the mask I saw that the edges had the soft effect I wanted, but it was a complete disaster!! The modeling clay had reacted with the paint beneath, so it become wet again, transparent, very sticky and the paint job was completely ruined. The paint didn't reharden either. Before trying to recover the errors I tried to 'seal' it by overspraying the model with a matt varnish, but it did not help; all the painted areas which had been covered by the modeling clay were still very sticky, and I was afraid the models was ruined. To try to save them, I sanded their surfaces until they didn't feel sticky anymore. Then I just primed them again and used brushes and acrylics for the camouflage.

So note to self, and don't do the same mistake as me; modeling clay does not work very well for painting masks. It made me search info if some modeling clay that would, but I didn't find any. Even Playdough doesn't seems to work acording to what I've seen online. Have you any experiences of what's working, or any other suggestions to get a spraypainted finnish without using an airbrush?

This project has taken a lot longer time that I expected it to, but finally my G-scale LGB Heeresfeldbahn rake slowly keeps growing...

My LGB Heeresfeldbahn so far with the original starterset + the 5 wagons described in this blogpost.
Click on photo for larger photo

It's been a lot of trains lately, so next blogpost will be about wargaming. A battle report perhaps? Sign up and follow this blog and find out.