Friday 13 June 2014

British WW2 Cromwell company

This is my British Cromwell company. The models are all metal or resin and I have based them all - I find metal is too likely to chip, particularly around the tracks, if left unbased. Resin often depends on the type of resin, with some quite brittle and hence safer when based. However, in this case I have based the resin vehicles more so that the whole unit is consistent than for protection. There are vehicles from different manufacturers and I have more about the different makes in my WW2 Manufacturers page above.  

First some pictures of the whole force: A HQ platoon, 3 platoons and some support vehicles:




Some pictures of the basic Cromwell. These are all Arrowhead Miniatures (metal kits). The decals are from Scale Specialties - see my post on applying decals.







 The Challengers are Gramodels resin kits - the Challenger is an extended Cromwell hull with a big turret housing a 17 pdr.







The HQ platoon has a Close Support Cromwell (Centaur) as well as the normal Cromwells. The Centaur has a 95mm short barreled howitzer. I have actually enhanced the gun by putting a short piece of plastic tubing on the end as I did not feel the gun provided with the model gave the right effect. Also in the HQ are two Crusader AA tanks. They are all Arrowhead.





The first support vehicle is an armoured command vehicle. This is a Pithead model and actually one of only two resin models they do (all the rest of their large range are metal).




Next are a couple of Cromwell engineer vehicles - an armoured recovery vehicle and a dozer. Both are Gramodel resin kits - although I added some extra superstructure detail around the crane on the front.




Finally a Scammel Wrecker, again a resin model from Gramodels.




Here is a size comparison of the Arrowhead Miniatures Cromwell and the Gramodel variants. The Arrowhead vehicles are 1/144 and Gramodels are 1/150 but there is only a small difference and it is only apparent at all if they are right next to each other.





Some close ups of the buildings. They are both 6mm TimeCast, the first is the Small German Farm and Outbuilding from the Eastern Europe range and the second a Dutch church from the Western Europe range.



5 comments:

  1. Very cool. Thanks again for the cromwells you did for me, they are awesome. Now I just need a few challengers. I love the little farm diorama, maybe I'll try to do something similar.

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  2. Steve, thanks for the good comparison photo here between the Gramodels and Arrowhead minis. I think Gramodels would be an excellent alternative for types not readily available from Arrowhead for example. Are their resin kits cleaner cast than ones from makers such as Fairy Kikaku or Kami de Korokoro?

    Dave

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    1. Dave

      I have not had any Fairy Kikaku although I have seen some advertised on ebay and they don't look very cleanly cast as far as I can tell - and even seem to have some things like tracks in two halves? Gramodels do vary a bit, with most cleanly cast and needing very little tidying up and repair with green stuff, but occasionally a model will need a bit more work and have some holes to fill in (e.g. from where the resin entered the mold). The detail comes out really nicely when painted and I find the effort worth while

      Steve

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  3. Thanks Steve.

    Does Gramodel have fairly good order turn-around?

    (I'm in the US, but delivery to you might give an idea of their service repsonse)

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    1. Dave

      he does a lot of shows (including railway modelling ones because his range includes railway stuff, and I think that may be where he started?). But this means it can take a while depending on whether he is busy preparing for shows or not. It also depends I think on what you order - if you order a lot of the same model then more likely he needs to cast rather than having any stock. Could be 3 or 4 weeks easily if you order 15+ models based on my last order

      Steve

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