Thursday 25 February 2010

French train




I finished these pieces of French artillery equipment for my Gilders' recent first outing. The horses, limbers, caisson and drivers are Hinton Hunt; the gun is Newline (actually the one from my Spanish "horse" artillery); and the howitzer is a Hinchliffe 20mm model, from the Peter Gilder collection.

They show the technique of leaving enough room on the base to accommodate the gun hitched behind the limber. For my British RHA I have used a variant, with limbers having a two horse team, but then having some extra bases of two- and four horse "add ons". This is partly because basing a six horse team and limber and having space for a limbered gun is unwieldy; partly because I don't have enough horses for all my British limbers at four or six horses each.

I have some Hinchliffe 25mm British baggage wagons I bought from Terry Wise once. These have teams of Jacklex oxen; the wagon is on one base, the team on another, and there is a single long sabot base they can both be placed on. The wagon's base is permanently glued to the sabot, the team is not. This would also give you the option to swap horse for oxen draught if you prefer.

As ever the usual disclainmer - this is not a painting blog, I know I am not a good painter and my style is limited to achieving as neat a block painted finish as I can manage. The idea is just to show the toys....

8 comments:

lewisgunner said...

very nice and a joy to see the models on parade! Can we have close ups of each?

Roy

lewisgunner said...

I see there are close ups!

Are these guard limber riders painted as line?? Or are they the line figure?
Roy

Vintage Wargaming said...

Hi Roy, I think they are a mixture of both - I will have to have a look at them. I know I strated with some Guard ones then realised I had both - but I'm not sure if I put aside the Guard ones .to repaint or kept them in

Clive

Vintage Wargaming said...

Hi Roy, I think they are a mixture of both - I will have to have a look at them. I know I strated with some Guard ones then realised I had both - but I'm not sure if I put aside the Guard ones .to repaint or kept them in

Clive

lewisgunner said...

I suspect that you have a mixture Clive. The line drivers are much raraer than the guard ones. Perhaps they were made later. I think the distinction is in the guard having epaulettes and the line not, a different shako plate (guard have an eagle) and different cuffs! But I am not certain.
Roy

Vintage Wargaming said...

Hi Roy, I think the easiest identifier is that the guard drivers have tall plumes and epaulettes - while the line have pompoms - but I could be wrong! i did these a few weeks ago, I think I cut off a plume or two to approximate to line, then found I had some line figures. For some reason I have quite a lot of drivers, I'd just not sorted them into the two types I think.

Clive

lewisgunner said...

aren't the uniform colours different? Guard are light blue, line light grey??
Roy

Vintage Wargaming said...

Yup. I meant the bare metal figures

Clive