Welcome to my build log for the Dragon 1/35 Leopold K5 railgun kit. This is my first build log and my first time ever posting to a modeling website so it will be a learning opportunity for all of us.

I’ve spent about an hour trying to figure out how to upload some photos to go with this post, but the photos aren’t uploading. I’m not sure if the issue is me, an internet issue on my end or an issue with the website (it’s probably me). I’ve given up on trying to upload anything for the moment and I need to get to some other things so I will submit this post now and fix the picture issue later. Hopefully I can attach the pictures to this post later or create an album with a link to make them available.

The box is big! REALLY big. It measures at 27 inches by 17 inches by 5 inches. You are going to need closet space and shelf space for this thing. Shout out to my wife - not only did she get it for me, she got it knowing it was a big kit. Thanks baby!

A ton of sprue’s, some photo etch, a few decals and 6 figures. I also purchased Trumpter’s Leopold crew to fill out the finished model as I think 6 figures will look funny on such a big kit. In reality the guns were serviced by over 20 crew so the extra figures won’t look out of place either.

The directions are standard Dragon - pictures, busy at times, with some errors. I’ve built a lot of Dragon kits in he past few years and I guess I’ve gotten used to the errors in the instructions. It’s sad but obviously Dragon isn’t going to change that.

I used three resources for this build, something I rarely do. I wanted them for pictures of the gun in action and less for making sure the kit was 100% accurate. I’m mostly an OOB builder so I don’t put in a lot of work fixing accuracy issues with a kit. The three resources are all very good. The Squadron book is what you would expect from them and the Armor PhotoGallery has more current pictures of surviving K5’s. I got Steven Zaloga’s book mainly because I like his books and how he writes.

Assembly for the first 6 steps, building the two rail carriages, went relatively smoothly. There were a few issues though. My biggest complaint outside of the carriage wheels (more below) is there are mold seams on a lot of the parts. A lot more than I’ve seen on most other Dragon kits. Some of the larger pieces, like the floor on one of the carriages were warped.

Luckily Dragon does not follow the same building method as their tank kits and you won’t have to use 5 or 6 sprue’s when assembling just one sub assembly.

Step 1 has 8 substeps A, B, C1, C2, D, E1, E2 and F. In substep A the directions have you put two tanks (parts G50, G51, G52 and G53) on the wrong side of the carriage frame. The left tank in the instructions goes on the right side and vice versa. Luckily the tanks are keyed so you can’t install them wrong.

All the carriage wheels in step D (24 in all) have 4 ejector pin marks on the side that faces outward. There is a small lip around each wheel that prevents you from filling these easily. (What gives Dragon? You couldn’t design this so they were on the inside of the wheel?). Luckily the brake pad and suspension details cover up most of the face of each wheel. I didn’t bother to fill the depressions but you can’t really see them once everything is put together.

I strayed from the assembly sequence thinking I would leave the wheel assembly and carriage separate until after they were primed and painted. When I test fitted these two sub assmbelies together I found out that small adjustment wheels glued on the carriage prevented the wheel assembly from fitting flush with the bottom of the carriage. I had to cut off the wheels and then reinstall them once the wheel assembly was glued into place. Follow the kit instructions and this isn’t an issue.

As I said earlier the floor of one of the carriages was warped. There we’re also a few gaps where the sides of the carriages didn’t meet up well with the floor.

It took me about 6 hours to assemble the two carriages over a weekend. Looking ahead in the instructions, I think these first 6 steps account for just over a third of the parts and assembly sequences. I primed each carriage in flat black anticipating this kit will get finished in stages and then brought together st the very end. I plan to paint and weather the two carriages before moving on to the next assembly steps.

I said at the beginning that this is a big kit. I put the gun platform won the two carriages to see about how big it would be and it measured about 37 inches long (the picture has a 5 dollar bill for scale).

I will be using Tamiya thin cement, Vallejo putty and Tamiya paint for this build in case anyone is curious. So far Flat Black XF-1 is the only color used.

Comments, questions and constructive criticism are welcome. Tips on how to upload pictures would be especially helpful!

Thanks for reading and I will have more to post next week.

Alan

Update to post #1:

So I finally got photos posted into an album “Dragon 1/35 Leopold railgun” and they should be viewable. Darren emailed me some info that helped. My biggest problem was the size of photos I was trying to post - they were too big. After I resized them down to 800 by 600 pixels they uploaded. Hopefully over the next couple of weeks posting pictures will get easier (it was a real pain so far).Alan