A Tank Called Coleraine

Warlord have many plastic kits in 1/56 or 28mm in their WW2 ranges, they are all of the quick build style and go together in less than a hour with no really tricky bits.  To personalise my models and to give them a more battle worn look, I like to make changes to the basic kit that represent the wear and tear often seen on tanks that have been in action. A notable feature of Churchills in action is how often pieces of the Track guards/fenders go missing or get damaged; to show this I need to leave off some of the kit parts and cut a few others up. The hull top comes in one piece with the top track guards attached. After looking at reference pictures I decided which bits to cut away.

Now the top run of track is exposed it will look odd with a big hole below it, to fix this, the open top of the sponson is blanked off with a piece of plastic card cut to size.

The other two hull tops were given a similar treatment and then the kits were assembled as per the instructions.

Due to a rush of enthusiasm I forgot to take a picture of the built kits before I started painting, so stepping out of order slightly, here is a picture of them after undercoating and base coat

After building the kits I decided to unpack my airbrush, I’ve not used it for a while so I had a fun game of ‘fight the airbrush’ while I worked to get my paint mixing mojo back up to speed, the white in particular didn’t want to play. this was surprising because it is the Stynylrez airbrush ready stuff. I faffed around with air pressure for a while but it still spattered, so I tried thinning it just a little and it immediately started blowing spider patterns everywhere, oh well, need to spend more time experimenting with it after I get this project finished.

To start I put on a black under coat, then tried some highlighting with white, the picture shows how this went.

Next step is choosing a base coat. This is where references and research come into play if you are looking to try and achieve some level of historical accuracy, however, I’m going for a gaming piece rather than a scale model, so ‘close enough’ will be my target. The problem is, conflicting evidence; some references I have show the tanks overall Light Stone colour, another (that I found today) states that 25th Armoured Brigade (of which North Irish Horse is a part) were Khaki Green. Why do these things show up after I’ve started painting?!!!

So after second guessing and tormenting myself trying to decipher black and white photos and trawling books and websites, I decided that the most likely colour for 25th tank brigade is Khaki Green. So, back to the airbrush, I didn’t have anything close to the right colour so I mixed up three different Vallejo Model Air colours; Camo Green, Burnt Umber and Pale Blue-grey in a 9:6:1 ratio. This got me close enough to the required colour. This was applied to all three, then some white was added to the mix and used to add some panel highlights to try and get a ‘sun-bleached’ look on the larger flat areas of colour. After that a liberal coat of Army Painter strong tone dip was applied and left overnight to dry.

Next up, start applying markings; first step is hand painting the names, red letters with white outline. Free hand painting letters and numbers is not my favourite, why do I put myself through stuff like this? Do I like the pain? Do I hate myself?

Anyway, the other two tanks will be ‘Cork’ and ‘Cavan’, much shorter (easier to paint)

Next up, add the rest of the markings; but, realising I don’t have all of the correct tactical markings, tomorrow will be a trip to Warlord to spend a few pennies on some decals and maybe some other goodies.

After a trip to Warlord HQ in Nottingham to purchase some decals (and a few other shiney bits) I started to add the necessary markings to the hulls and turrets. Water slide decals are easy to use with a bit of patience and using the Micro-Sol and Micro-Set system gives a really neat finish with no silvering (this happens when the decal doesn’t bed down fully on the surface and the carrier film looks like a silver/grey line around the decal).

Had to slow down a bit because of life ‘stuff’, but managed to get a couple of hours in today.

Started to dry brush up the highlights to tone down the dark look that the wash caused. After pondering a few different colours I settled on Vallejo Panzer Aces Afrika Korps Tankcrew for the colour. A little ironic, I suppose, but it’s a nice lighter green with a grey tint that lifts the base colour back towards the green from the brown of the wash.

To test paint ideas ‘in situ’ on the model I’m painting, I paint the underside of the vehicle the same as the top so I can try out paint ideas without ruining the upper scheme, (that’s the theory anyway, but I still have plenty of blunders with colours and techniques, that’s what you get for always wanting to experiment instead of choosing one way and sticking to it).

Time is getting away from me on this project, so I’m having to cut back on some of the weathering plans; I’ve decided not to add any chipping or more paint effects as I plan to add a heavy layer off dust that most likely cover up the majority of any other weathering.

For a quick paint method for tracks, I like to do the following;

Base coat of Army Painter Fur Brown from a rattle can.

Wash with a mix of Vallejo acrylic washes, Sepia Brown and Black 60:40 mix thinned with a drop of water.

Dry-brush with Vallejo Oily Steel.

Final steps will be detail painting; exhausts, tools, etc. Then adding a heavy layer of Tunisian dust.

I’m calling these done for now, they’re ready to put on the table.  The scheme is suitable for Tunisia and the Italian campaign so I have options for the development of my Eighth Army project beyond North Africa. I’ve enjoyed building these and plan to add a few more of these ‘easy build’ kits to my collection.