Polish armored train WIP 1

I received this Polish armored train from Battlefront as a gift of appreciation for my work with the "September campaign" book I wrote a few weeks back. To tell the truth I would probably not afford to buy it myself so I'm extremely happy about it and want to extend a special thanks to Steven at WWPD for hooking me up with a Battlefront contact and Chris Townley over at Battlefront for hooking me up with the train itself.

Now the Polish armored train is a huge model, when assembled and standing with each car next to the other the train is 25" long! I also realized I had not been able to see the train in pieces or "heavy WIP" on the internet, only undercoated or fully painted pictures. So I thought it could be interesting to share the process of assembly and show you how each car is cast in various amount of pieces.

As a small anecdote the train arrived 8am a couple of days ago, the doorbell rang and I was still asleep, wondering "what the hell is going on?" thinking it was one of our neighbors. So I have to run down the stairs newly awake and pretty much in my underpants to open the door and see a guy from the postal service, and as they usually arrive around 11-12am I thought my watch was broken. It seemed that he could not fit the parcel in our mailbox.

One thing that I was anxious about was that the pieces could be chipped from the shipping, so I was relieved to see they came in a special foam package with each piece locked in place tightly. So everything was intact, all parts included - and - I had heard about the warping of some of the train cars early on but this train was in perfect condition.

You get 6 turrets, 4 sloped for the light 75mm guns and 2 more sharp edged for the heavy howitzers. You also have 2 AA mg turrets that go on top of each artillery car and lots of MG's that go on the sides of the artillery and assault car to cover all angles.

I washed all the resin pieces, mainly to get some of the resin dust off. I also used a knife to clean a small resin bumps where the pieces would interlock. It's not hard work to assemble the train, but it does take some time. I spent probably 3-4 hours working on this from opening the box to having it assembled.

You also get 16 rare earth magnets, and these are strong as hell and very slim. I'm going to wait until the train is painted before I glue the magnets to the train and the turrets.

For the radio wire for the antennas on the assault car I made a noob mistake of using regular thread - which looked damn good until I spray painted it. Now it looks like 15mm barbed wire. I'm going to smooth it out with some paint on varnish during the last painting stages.

So that's it for this WIP entry. Next time I hope to show some pictures of at least one fully painted train car. I'm going to use the GW spraygun to at least undercoat it dark green, and will experiment a little to see if I can make the camo pattern using that spray gun as well though I am prepared to paint those with a brush like I did on my tanks and artillery pieces.

As a side note, I did some scouting for train tracks today, and the best looking and most cost effective option seem to be fully painted resin railroad pieces from "Total System Scenics"/QRF. I will probably order some soon enough, I just have to take a few measures of my game table and see how much I will need to make a versatile railroad.