Panzerzug BP42 (Armored Train)

[Santi Pérez]

I agree with everybody, T. Dürrschmidt, fantastic painted figures, great vehicles and amazing terrain.

Congratulations.

Santi.

[T. Dürrschmidt]

The camouflage scheme looks particularly impressive, although quite how you would have 'hidden' a machine as big as this and running on railway tracks is a mystery.

Normally they would have used natural material like small trees tied to the sides of the train. Painting the trains in 3 tone camo scheme like all the other vehicles was normal routine I think, even they knew they couldn´t hide the train with it. It was an order, so it had to be done, making sense or not.

[T. Dürrschmidt]

Mr.Durrschmidt I tip my hat in salute to you for this massive yet fine work. Incredible variety of figure poses and I love that you have so many figures with the train (as it actually would have been). such a beautiful piece of engineering by the Germans, kind of a shame a single P47 could lay one to waste but that's war, eh? Extraordinary work Herr Durrschmidt!

Thanks for all the comments.

@Herr Bessiere: You are absolutely right. The armored trains had some serious problems. They were pretty vulnerable to aircraft attacks, they could´nt really defend themselves against tanks, when the locomotive was damaged, the whole train could´nt move anymore and against partisans they were often very helpless, when they sabotaged the tracks. But the Germans produced this kind of trains till 1945, but with better active defence against tanks (the Panzerjägerwagen was introduced in late 1944, with a long barreled Panzer IV turret. ). They could´nt improve the armor of the trains because they would have been to heavy for the most track systems. The German army often used it as a mobile artillery platform (later trains had 4 x 10,5cm guns) and as an armored command post with good communication equipment. And the infantry and light tanks could move out to fight enemies out of the train.

[Peter]

Once again you made some museum art. Never seen something like this before but it looks excellent! And the background is super!