Just a dio of the dora railgun. It is most famous for its contributions at Sevastopol but it was fully assembled and prepared to fire in a forest about 15 miles outside Stalingrad in the fall of 1942. Just prior to firing it was hurriedly disassembled. It is supposed that the approach of some Soviet troops led to its quick disappearance.I apologize for all the pics. The dio is about 14 feet long and 5 feet wide so it is hard to get all of the parts in one pic.

hi there,

This is a stunning diorama. What can I say? It is beautiful.
I really like the crane and the maultier. They really look the part.
You work is a candidate for the Features Section!!
Thanks for sharing!

Cheers.

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This thing is massive! Everything flows and meshes well. I'm sure you had a lot of fun building it. I saw one similar to this at Nats, but done with a Leopold being strafed by P-51s. I believe it won best of show.

Roger,
Wow man! This really needs to be a feature. Outstanding work! Can you even move this thing?

Roger that is amazing, the detail work is superb as is the painting and weathering...Great work.

Tom

There was a thread here many years ago about what would be your dream diorama ... one that would be life consuming, a one-off and most of all: huge. Since then we have Claude´s Clearvaux diorama and yours. They´re always a please to see as theres so much going on and so much involved. Photographs of the whole scene are almost impossible as you need to get back far enough to get everything in, in the viewer and I guess its not easy to move this outside. Have enjoyed watching this evolve Roger. "Just a dio of the dora railgun" has to the understatement of the year!!

Very very nice. What I think,is the best thing about this is the fact that it is so massive and yet the detail is still superb. Usually when I see a dio this big the parts and figures are toy-like because probably the guy gets burned out with the sheer amount of work but that is not the case here and every vehicle and fig I see are wonderful. Plus what I like is that there are really unusual subjects like the sani mule and the crane and the clever use of a soviet limber to hook some horses to an infantry gun. Nice stuff.
J

Yes some real outstanding work where do you keep a 14 foot long diorama
And what kits are the ambulance and bus

Roger

One word Stunning.

This is the standard I would like to aspire to.

Thanks for sharing this inspired piece of modelling art.

Gerry

Thanks for the kind words. It is very much a work in progress and some of the vehicles are just space fillers until I can get to them later. I am really happy that it was noticed that the limber is a hodgepodge of different countries. Looking at period pictures it is interesting that the Germans were so ready to assimilate any vehicles or equipment that they stumbled across. Some seem to have as much foreign equipment and weapons as German. I rarely see that kind of variety in pictures of American and British soldiers.Works out well when modelling German scenarios as there is a lot more variety and flexibility than in allied scenarios I feel. The limber is Soviet, the horse saddles are German and the artillery is Czech Skoda. I wanted to show some of the weird hodgepodge that is often seen in German photos and I am glad that was noticed. I definitely like the more unusual vehicles as it helps keep my interest. I wanted to comment on the difference in the quality of equipment between the Italian and German forces so I placed The Breda 32 Recupero crane next to the Bussing-Nag crane. The differences in quality are striking. The Bussing-Nag would not be terribly out of place if it were seen on the road today while the Breda seems like it belongs in a museum. The Bussing-Nag is from Azimut although the stabilizers and the tool box were scratch built. I always wondered what the inside of the box looked like and when I researched it I was surprised to learn that the sides of the box could be dropped and used as a work table so I wanted to model that as I had never seen it modeled before. The Breda is from the now defunct Historica. The crane of the Breda was scratchbuilt as the resin crane was badly warped and not very good quality. The canopy over the rear of the Breda was also scratchbuilt as it seemed to add some balance to the vehicle and some interest. The ambulance is a Ford V3000 by scale model accessories with Friul tracks. The big excavating crane was originally made by scale model accessories which was bought out by elite models which was bought out by someone else. It was very difficult to find. It is a Menck M50 which was a post war crane so some modifications had to be made to make it into a ww2 excavator. The modifications were simple but the tough part was the metal crane portion. The kit has a resin crane in little pieces which was a realy bad idea. All of the airholes and brittle resin make it completely unusable so the crane portion has to be scratchbuilt. It was a terrifically huge job.The bus is also Azimut and is no longer produced.I see them occasionally on ebay however.

Wow! Well done!

Indeed. the quality of your vehicles is outstanding. I really like the ambulance vehicle and all your sub-actions, crane's and all. Figure painting is high standard also so this is nearly perfect!
Ok, just to find one thing to say, the groundwork looks minimalistic to me, a bit could be done with the grass and other surfaces, more variation.

Do you have a picture from far including the whole Dora? Would love to see it.

Congratulations for this work

Claude


Edit: My post appeared 3 minutes after your reply stating that it is Work in progress, so either forget my groundwork comment or there is time to do something about :-)

beautiful, just beautiful...

"I've been working on the railroad..." is an understatement. It really shows how massive Dora is next to all those people and vehicles.

The groundwork will be the very last stage after all of the vehicles and figures are placed. Just the basic groundwork layout is done at this point. It will be quite a long time before I reach that stage.

So this will get even better! I wish I had your persevearence brother!
I only know about the horses and limber because I scratchbuilt a German version and it can be found on this forum if you search it out.
J

Roger this is a Massive Build!!! I would love to see more photos of the Dora too. 14 feet! Wow! Can I use any more exclamation points!!! this is awesome.. I don't think you answered the BIG question yet.. Where do you put a diorama that big?

Show us more please!!!

An interested fan...

Dave

The diorama is in the building next to my office. It used to be a daycare but it went out of business and I bought the building and used part for storage and part for "man cave". To answer the other question, yes, it could be moved but it would require a great deal of effort. I imagine at least 6 people to distribute the weight evenly and a small moving van. However, it is far from finished so that won't be a problem for quite a while yet.

Roger, I have to agree with everyone else. This is stunning and the level of detail is fantastic also. Best of show for just showing up with a 14x5 dio. With the amount of time and effort put in to it, I'd say Dio of the Year! Thanks for sharing!
Wow!

hi roger,

are you there?

I read with great interest your work, big and great!
as I have on the bench a bussing nag with crane, I would like to know where you found the documentation on the chest ...

".......The Bussing-Nag is from Azimut although the stabilizers and the tool box were scratch built. I always wondered what the inside of the box looked like and when I researched it I was surprised to learn that the sides of the box could be dropped and used as a work table so I wanted to model that as I had never seen it modeled before....."

can you help me? thanks from now on, p.

WOW!

Dear editor: make this a special!
This a superb dio with a million things to see.

Hi Rodger,

Terrific project you have underway there. Vehicles and figures look super, so much to see. I agree about the ground work being a bit sparse but plenty of time for that by the looks of things.

Lovely work.

Al

You are insane man!!