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This is the resicast Churchill AVRE set married to the Tamiya Churchill. Its a good set, with turret, front hull and side attchments, but it is not entirely complete and you'll need to use your references to get a bit more accuracy if you wish. Mark Bannermans "Modelling the Churchill Tank" by Osprey was very useful as it includes a number of AVRE models from which you can cross-reference features. I have most of the other major Churchill references, but none really show the AVRE in detail. Chris Shillitos excellent "Armour in Focus" Churchill website was also very helpful.
The resicast set was assembled without drama, but removal of the track covers was a tricky business, and you'll need to add some thin plastic card to cover the part of the Tamiya sponson that the tracks sit on, and also the sides. I also removed the skirt attachments from the hull and added the relevant bolt holes. Parts of the Eduard etched set were used to add small details, and the spare bogies on the hull were scratch built using bogies from a sprue ordered from Rainbow Ten in Japan. Tracks were from Fruilmodel, but if I'm honest, I'll not bother with them in future for the Churchill as the Tamiya vinyl ones look fine to me.
The tank was given a few coats of black car spray paint from a rattle can and the base coat was Xtracrylic British OD. Various filters and washes were applied with oil paints, but I wanted to keep the vehicle quite clean so I could depict the vehicle in a D-Day preparation setting. The decals were a mixture of Accurate Armour and the large One-Bravos were German Archer turret markings slightly modified. The inspiration behind this scheme was a picture of AVREs on Juno beach sent to me by Bob Gregory, which show AVREs of "1 Troop" lumbering off the sand. Few pictures of AVREs with the wading trucks still on exist, as they were blown off pretty much as soon as they got out of the water. The 5th Asslt Regt RE was used to support the Canadians on Juno, and I'm afraid that I have no idea which Squadron this particular vehicle belonged to.
The cobblestone base was a Verlinden resin item, and the back was a framework of wood and card covered by Tamiya paper "bricks". The posters were again by Verlinden. The EWC sign was handpainted. It stands for Emergency Water Supply, and was painted in flourescent yellow. Lots of examples of this sign still exist today, and there is one on a wall near my village in rural Cumbria.
The figures were by resicast, except the Tamiya "mechanic" in the turret. The boxes were mainly by Accurate Armour, and the cat was by Tamiya!
Hope you like it + as ever, comment always welcome. I'd like once again to thank Bob for the picture whioch inspired the model. [View discussion] [Discuss my model]
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