Gentlemen,
Thank you very much for your responses and interest in my models. Here is the railway gun and spade wagon photos.
Railway Artillery Howitzer
This model of the Mark 1 gun on a Mark 1 railway trolley is the result of many lonely week night hours in various hotels across merry England.
The gun is a 12 inch howitzer built by Armstrongs of Elswick, Newcastle, and the trolley wagon was built by Birmingham Carriage and Wagon Works. After the army had been taken off the Dunkirk beaches most of the heavy equipment and weapons had been left behind. These guns were primarily intended for mobile coastal defence and followed the practice of armoured trains.
The model is constructed entirely from plastic sheet, with the usual steel wheels and some other small bits in brass. The rivet heads have been cut off from cast components supplied by Calibre 35 and supper glued to the platework. The rough estimate of rivets is about 4,000. The gun is designed is to be lowered onto the track when preparing for action. This is done by having the bogies attached to large box sections at each end of the trolley. These are raised and lowered by large screw threads and I have managed to make the model operate in exactly the same way.
The gun was accompanied by a warflat which carried the outriggers and other large lumps of equipment, these were lifted off by a small hand crane. The outriggers and spades in the model can be slotted into the holders on the gun trolley for setting the gun for action.
The gun barrel is currently several plastic tubes, but the main difficulty is to cut the shape of the barrel. I do have a plan to use a homemade lathe but hope to get a friendly modeler to turn one up in aluminum. There are lots of rivets, about 4,000, and I have done nearly 50%. Contrary to popular response, cutting the heads off plastic rivets, only 1mm in diameter and super gluing them on long straight lines is quite therapeutic. Particularly after a hard day in the office. The accompanying warflat carries the shell trays and hardware for anchoring the gun down. The spades are dug into the ground and attached to gun wagon with the large outrigger arms.
The shells have been painted in dull yellow, as per your most welcome advice, and I out the red and green bands on during the next painting session.
Thanks again for your responses and will keep updating with new photos as I progress the train, David.



