Hi, I finally get a day where I can get some serious building done and am just finishing up one of Dragon's older kits. Their 4-axle heavy railway car. I think it's kit 6032. Unfortuntely, this is a kit that is no longer to be had, but maybe it will be re-released one of these days here in the near future, what with the advent of Trumpter's new loco due out this coming spring. If Mother Nature blesses us with another nice day tomorrow I will spray the flatbed with some Testor's dullcote and begin the weathering process later on. Then all I have to do is get back to building the turret of Dragon's Panzer IV E kit and mounting the whole thing on top of the R.R. car, plus a whole lot of goodies to go with it. Maybe by this spring I will be able to call it all done, and maybe not!

Unforuntely on my local trip to the hobby store today I picked up Dragon's new Vorpanzer and Tamiya's StuG III Ausf. B kits, so I could say that even though I reduced the stack by one box, I added two back. Is this bad math or what?

The Vorpanzer kit is really just their earlier Ausf. E kit with a couple of additional parts to it, but I figure that if I didn't get it now, 6 months down the road if I decided I wanted it then, I won't be albe to find it. Such is the nature of this hobby anymore. The StuG III, as far as I can tell, really looks nice and I think this will be a wonderful kit to build. The big question here for me is will I get to it this year, or the next, and just how much cat hair and dust will be on it when I do. Ha, ha!

Take care, Larry

Larry, the Vorpanzer kit is far, far more than the E with a few bits! It's been extensively reworked. Have a look at this here.

Vinnie

HI, Yes, I had heard that Dragon sort of "took it on the chin" because the earlier Ausf. E kit wasn't "up to snuff," on certain measurements, and it says a lot for this company to go the the trouble of making the corrections necessary to satisfy the various builders world-wide. Guess this is what makes Dragon, Dragon.

But from purely a personal perspective, if the extra armor plating was removed from the new kit, I seriously doubt that I could tell which was which between the two. The only reason I bought this one was because of that neat looking extra armor on the turret.

By the way, thanks for posting the article, it was very infomative for me, as was the article on the 251/17 halftrack. I almost got one of those little buggers today too. Luckily I got out of the shop before I had a chance to go back and look at it again. But there is always next week I'm afraid, and if it is still there, the stack may grow by one more box. Curses on my weakness for new kits that may never get built in my lifetime!

Take care, Larry