For my new project I am cobbling a few items together to make a refugee scene with some Stalingrad figures that I have been wanting to use. It will display an abandoned Opel Staff car on the side of a gravel road being passed by some refugees with a horse drawn cart loaded with luggage and kids. The woman will be modified some to be controlling the horses. The Opel is from Bronco, the cart from Master box, figures and luggage by Stalingrad and the horses from my spares box, no clue who there from as a friend gave them to me at an AMPS meeting a couple years ago.

The Opel ready for paint. The grill decorative top got knocked off and lost. I shaped a new one from plastic rod.

Opel in initial paint. Panzer gray with some German Yellow over spray. My lines were not as tight as I would like, but will look better once I fade and weather the paint.



Now on to that wagon.

Greg-- looks good, interesting project to follow
Best of luck with it
DJ

Interesting subject Greg, nice to see a modeler showing a less heroic side of the war.

Goodluck and kind regards
Steven

Great start! ... following along.

—mike

Thanks. The cart is pretty close to being assembled and I had to set the kids in to see how it looked. I will be adding hay and other luggage to fill it up, but this gives you a working image of where I'm heading.

Hi Greg..,

Have something similar planned myself for my next project later in the year, so will look out for this one, pinch some ideas.. Stalingrad do do some great refugee figures which I'm also hoping to use, your plan sounds pretty good. I've used the kit of the 2 small children already in another dio, and found although they were well detailed & great to paint, were 'very' small in comparison to the other 1/35 figures from other companies, like Dragon & MK35. Obviously they're children, but they seemed exceptionally small, out of scale even. I guess if you're just using Stalingrad figures then that won't be so evident.
Are you planning a focal point, something in particular happening that helps tell a story, i.e. some interaction between the figures in the cart & people on the road..?

Will keep an eye out on your progress, good luck!
Simon.

Yep,this one looks very interesting.
J

Simon, I agree, those kid's are a bit small, but they do look so good. Still developing the plan some.

Just a thought-
Cut the wagon in half and make it more teetery ( )
Just have it on one axle. And thin the slats down.
Looks more like they had time to hitch up the team, comfortably seat the kids, etc, instead of "Oh, Sh*te, we better go!" Stuff, just crammed in, kids all askew.

Again, just mein zwei pfenning. Lookin forward to seeing it all up and running! Jealous of the airbrush camo too.
JoeP

Looking great.
Been wanting to use those figures myself.
Looking forward to you progress.

Tom

Been horsing around tonight with the cart, pun intended. The cart is configured for two horses straight out of the box, which just seemed over kill for such a small cart. I reconfigured it for one and worked on getting one of the horses together. I think the horses are from the old ESCI German Supply wagon and putting just the one together was a challenge involving two clamps and lots of sanding. Putty is applied and drying, but this is the basic layout. The white poles will be bent up when hooked up to the horse.

I admire where this is going and am especially looking forward to the tie in to the wagon.

The children are not small, they're underfed. My next door neighbor was a refugee during most of World War II and her diet stunted her growth significantly.

These aren't beef eating Texans but homeless Russians living from raw potato to raw potato.

I was able to paint the horse and wagon. Before applying paint, I used a wire wheel in a dremel tool to age the wagon some. The figures are being painted now.

Greg, this is really coming together nicely! I love the color/tone you have on the horse, and the wire brushing for the wood texture is a great idea. I'll have to try that as I'm working on trying to transform plastic into wood crates/furniture.

Chapman, the wire wheel does a great job.....

I'm adding these two guys to the scene. More picture this weekend.

The kids are painted and loaded into the wagon. Hay has also been added.

Hi Greg,

Please, allow some comments from a horseman:
google a bit for the horse tack since it is far from complete! The way you did it wouldn't work.....

Hope you accept my advise,

cheers,

P.

Paul, I will post another photo showing the hook up, it should clarify what I'm doing.

The two officers painted up and a close up, of the horse attachment to the wagon.

The Opel with road dirt and dust applied.

Everything put together and wrapped up. The Opel is a captured German WH vehicle repurposed by the Red Army. The two officers are working up details for a counter attact as refugees clear the area.

Great dio, I'm loving it!!! The soviet officers are magnificent!