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....

Prussian National Contingent: Artillery

These pictures shoe the artillery elements of the contingent, which is very well provided in this respect. The first picture shows a Hinton Hunt Prussian field gun code A4 with a Hinton Hunt crew: and due to a miscalculation when ordering guns from Newline I currently have one crew waiting for a gun.

The second picture shows 6 crews with Newline guns - 4 6 pdrs and 2 howitzers.

The final picture shows 3 limbers. I only have one set of limber riders, both Clayton castings, one of which has lost an arm! I will replace this eventually. I have plenty more limbers but am restricted by the lack of suitable horses. The ones here were very kindly provided (and painted) by Stryker, of the Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargames Figures blog.

My intention with limbers is to provide 2-horse teams on the base, then have a number of 2 and 4 horse additional bases which can be added to limbers on the move.

AL 2A British Ammunition Limber

Artillery equipment and horses

Hinton Hunt provided artillery crews, pieces and limbers for a number of countries, together with two sets of draught horses.

H 1 and H 2 were the British horses (near side and offside); they were used for the British limber AL 2, and also for the Prussian limber AL 4, and Austrian limber AL 5, and Russian limber AL 6. There is also a British limber ammunition cart AL 2A

These were also the horses suggested for use with the American Civil War range of figures, pulling the AL 1 limber for both sides.

H 3 and H 4 were the French horses (near side and offside): they were used for the French limber AL 3 and French four wheel Caisson AW 1

The artillery pieces produced were:

• A 2 British Field Gun
• A 3 French Field Gun
• A 4 Prussian Field Gun
• A 5 Austrian Field Gun
• A 6 Russian Field Gun

The A 1 code was used for the 12 pounder Napoleon gun for the American Civil War range.

These pices of equiopment are usually marked HHF on the underside with a code number.

It is fair to say that their artillery equipment was not Hinton Hunt's greatest achievement. The guns seem to be a little small and the limbers are quite thick and crude, especially when compared to the original Hinchliffe 20mm equipment range (not the current 25mm). The Hinchliffe 20mm range were among the best guns ever produced. Despite the best endeavours of several people to track down the moulds, they seem to have been lost at some point in the varuious sales of the Hinchliffe ranges since the 1970s. I have spent the last year acquiring six sets of the Colonial Elephant Drawn Artillery set, but that's another story.

Peter Gilder seems to have shared this opinion - the guns with his Guard Foot and Horse crews you can find on this site are all Hinchliffe 20mm items. There was also a Lamming range in 20mm which Donald Featherstone enthused about.

When I can get them, I use Hinchliffe 20mm equipment with Hinton Hunt crews. I will post pictures of all the Hinton Hunt equipment I can find; and some guns and limbers in unit pictures will be Hinchliffe, and where possible I will note this.

H 4 French offside draught horse

H 3 French nearside draught horse

H 2 British offside draught horse

H 1 British nearside draught horse