While I contemplate how to approach rebuilding the Captain's Cabin on Sophie's Revenge, I decided to take a closer look the "Charing Cross 1940" vignette from Scale 75.
This vignette is built in 1/35th scale and while I haven't run a ruler across the parts (and probably won't) everything at least feels proportionately right. My goal was to dry fit everything and get a feel for how its going to go together and how I can approach the painting. This will be the first vignette that I have worked on were I didn't have to figure out the story, its pretty self evident in this case. I am contemplating adding one or two more figures to add a little more context but I can put that off for now.
I have broken it down into sub-assemblies and I should be able to paint each sub-assembly completely before the final assembly.
1st Sub-Assembly: Tracks and under carriage. All of this lies below the level of the platform and is definitely going to need all of the painting done or almost done before I can even put this assembly together. The gap between the passenger truck and the platform wall is to thin to get a paintbrush in there, so that base platform piece and most of the rest of the pieces will need to be painted before this can go together. There are a fair number of fiddly bits that go down into this and some of them have curved and will need to be straightened.
These are three major pieces for this sub assembly. the platform, the passenger truck and a single wheel. The platform could use a couple of more ties, there is only one and you should be able to see at least two more and maybe even a third. I don't think it would be to difficult to add those and it would give a little more to look at.
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| The passenger truck has a locating pin to attach it to the side of the platform. The clearance is tight. |
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| Then the wheel attaches to the truck with another locater pin. The odd extension on the top of the wheel is the locator pin for the base of the passenger compartment. It all fits really tight. There are a couple of more detail pieces that go here and the backside of the passenger truck could do with some more detailing. |
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| Here is a look from the platform side. Looks pretty good, almost all the painting will need to be finished on the passenger truck and the bottom of the platform before I can actually put them together. |
2nd Sub-Assembly: Passenger Compartment. This bit is more straight forward and I should be able to build the entire piece before needing to paint any of it.
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| Here are the four major pieces of the passenger compartment |
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| A quick dry fitting, there are going to be a couple of gaps that will need filling and there is definitely a bit of clean up work required. Again there are some extra fiddly bits to go in here as well. |
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| A look with the roof in place. The edges of the bottom of the passenger compartment definitely need some cleanup, but I should be able to assemble and then paint the whole thing. I might leave off the roof and attach it last. |
3rd Sub-Assembly: Alice & Johnny. This one is pretty straight forward as well. Both figures can be completely assembled and painted and then added to the compartment.
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| Alice only needs to have one leg and her head attached. Johnny needs a bit more work with a torso and two arms to put together. |
4th Sub-Assembly: Misc Pieces. The two extra bits that come along are a rifle and an odd bag. The rifle is pretty straight forward, however, the bag will probably be discarded. It looks a lot more like a bag to hold knitting in than a soldiers hold-all. I'll peruse the 1/35th scale aftermarket scene to see what kind of extras bits I can come up with. Otherwise its going to look pretty barren on the inside of the compartment. The same is true for the scene outside the compartment, one or two more figures would not be amiss to give a sense of urgency to the scene.
After a little dry fitting and closer examination I'm still quite impressed with the quality of this kit. It should be pretty easy to clean up and assembly. The only thing that seems to be missing is a spot for the lamp that goes on the end of the under carriage. Getting it into position shouldn't be a problem and quite frankly I'm not sure it should be there. A little research on WWII Era British passenger coaches is now in order!
Trains and miniatures how can you go wrong?
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