British Artillery Caissons, and Some Very Big Guns

Delayed by a late decision to strip the limbers, here are two examples of what Carl Franklin, in his lovely book, describes as the British Two-Wheeled Ammunition Car. A quick glance, of course, will confirm that the car is hooked up behind a standard limber, so it is in fact a four-wheeled vehicle, but articulated, which was regarded as a big advance over the earlier rigid 4-wheeler. These are the carts which accompanied the individual batteries into action, to provide an immediate reserve of ammunition.

The models are Lamming throughout - equipment and horses, and also the drivers, as evidenced by their Easter Island profiles and the trademark Lamming elephant whip. My thanks and compliments to Clive and to Dave Watson, who somehow came up with yet more supplies of extinct artillery kit.

Since I am deep in the artillery projects box at present, I think I may take the opportunity to make up and paint some more siege guns. As these may be of some interest, here are a couple I prepared earlier. I included a more normal 9pdr gun to give an idea of scale, and you will see that these siege guns are very bad boys indeed. These are 18pdrs from Hinchliffe's (current) 25mm scale range, which should make them way too big for the Minifigs gunners. Before you laugh (and I laughed myself before I checked the sizes), be assured that I have measured these castings and they are spot-on for 1/72 of the official weapon dimensions for an iron 18pdr. Further, Clive and I once put these same Hinch 25 castings alongside a Finescale Factory model of an 18pdr, and they were exactly the same size - I am not even prepared to consider that FSF would ever make anything which was not perfect 1/72, so let's just assume this is what they were like.

Big.

Anyway, I have 2 or 3 more of these to prepare, and a 10" howitzer, so I may take a short break from painting vehicles. Note also that my Allied Siege Train and associated engineering chaps have their bases painted a fetching shade of mud brown. It seemed a good idea at the time.