Introduction

During World War 2 Germany used many types of armored rail cars, mostly for the protection of the movement of trains carrying supplies. The Steyr K2670 was a self-propeller armor train car weighing in at about 9 tons. The armored car had a crew of five to eight men, and was armed with four MG34 machine guns.

A new resin kit from Profimodeller provides the ability to build and display this interesting armored train car.

Contents

The kit contains many resin and photo-etched parts. The box states the kit contains "uretan" parts, which from what I can find is a form of plastic. In the box is also the instructions and a sheet of decals.

Review

The new kit from Profimodeller comes in a sturdy box, opening reveals two smaller boxes and some a few little bags of bigger parts. The bigger parts being the sides of the vehicle, are cast in a black plastic like material, which I can assume from the box description is "uretan". Also the bottom of the vehicle is cast in resin. There are also two lengths of track rail cast in the same material. Inside the two smaller boxes are small parts cast in resin, as well as some smaller flat parts cast in uretan.

A look at the uretan parts show just flat parts with bevelled edged, with a couple having a couple of grooves. There are no other distinguishing marks on these pieces. As for the resin parts, there are many cast parts that include hatches, handles, and the MG34 machine guns. A look at the resin shows not the best casting quality for some of the parts, as I found some parts warped, casting bubbles, and flash. This was very prominent on the MG34 barrels, as I almost did not recognise them. Also for the machine gun port hatches, I also did not recognise them, as to me they looked like seats, as there was no real surface detail.

As there is no surface details on the uretan parts, it does look like the use of the large fret of photo-etched parts and lengths of cast weld-bead will be used to create the surface details.

The kit does include uretan parts, including rail and sleepers, to be able to build a length of rail track to display your finished model on. Both the tracks and sleepers look to be well done, with some nice looking spike details cast onto the sleepers.

The instructions are printed on a several small sheets of paper folded together that show the assembly steps. A look through the steps shows the assembly to be very similar to scratch building, especially the assembly of the main body. While most parts are not numbered, the first page does have a parts layout with number.

A big issue, especially for novice builders, is there are no locator markings or pins on any of the parts. The instruction sheet does include a scale dimension drawing from different angles, so the builder will have to translate the scaling to the model during the build to ensure proper location and alignment of the parts. This would definitely add to the complexity and build time of the construction.

The kit does include a sheet of decals, with marking schemes for 3 different vehicles, one in dark grey, one in dark yellow, and the other a two tone camouflage. The close inspection of the decals do show some "blurriness" as they don't look to be very sharp in detail.

Overview

This is definitely not a kit for the feint at heart, as there seems to be a lot of effort required to complete this build. With that said, it is definitely a very interesting subject, and I don't believe has been done in plastic. As stated the kit will build very much like scratch building as it will require measuring to align parts, but with the said all the parts are pre-cut and shaped. As for the resin detail, some is good, but there are parts that are warped and contain casting bubble. With a great deal of effort and some after-market replacement parts, this does look like it will build into a nice model. I would only recommend for those with the skill and want to put in the "extra" effort.