My local hobby shop made me an offer I couldnt refuse on the price of a Tamiya Austin Tilly kit. Though I already have build two of them, I decided not to let this offer pass but promised myself to make Tilly Number Three into something special. I was lucky to find some striking pictures of a Tilly belonging to a UK-based Bomb Disposal Unit. All British wartime BDU vehicles were painted with bright red wheel arches to make them stand out from the bulk of the otherwise Green or OD vehicles.
There is quite a lot of interesting information available on internet on WW2 BDUs, I found to my delight. Each of the Services had their own BDU organization ie the Army, the Royal Navy and the RAF. The Army BDUs were under control of the Corps of Royal Engineers* and were organized in regional or local units. * - The REs carry this honorary title as the only one in the British Army unlike for instance the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers or the Royal Army Service Corps. This implies that each individual member of the RE is a Royal Engineer i n his own right, instead of a member of a Royal Corps!
My BDU Tilly is explicitly dedicated to all Bomb Disposal Units wheter in the past or in the present. I think we should all take a very deep bow to the way in which they perform their heroic duties, from disabling unexploded German bombs in WW2 to safely removing IEDs in Afghanistan today. Too often with paying the extreme price.
The basic Tilly kit builds like a dream, a true Tamiya Shake-N-Bake example. After the two earlier Tillies OOB and just in time for the Legend resin upgrade set to become available, I decided to combine the two together.
A few things have been said here on T-L when the Legend Tilly kit was introduced, all based on just the publication pics. Let me add my own hands-on comments on the Legend LF1270 “Tilly Update & Stowage Set”. There is Good News and Bad News. The good news is that the resin canvas roof is a huge improvement over the basic kit roof; it has a lot of very sharp detail that is missing from the kits roof. However, under Bad News; it takes a lot of patience and experience to figure out how much of the excess resin must be removed to make it fit snugly; this is a pretty time-consumig process of cautious trial and error. Id recommend the replacement canvas roof of this Legend set to experienced modellers only. Especially so since there isnt a shred of paper instruction sheet included in the upgrade set; all you get is a Ziploc bag full of resin parts.
The winter collar for the radiator and the canvas covered spare tyre on the roof thankfully are a lot simpler to fit.
Some fellow T-Lers mildly snorted at the extras that come with this set, but if you give them a closer look they appear to be a valuable and creative addition! The .50 Cal ammo boxes are not just ammo boxes; one open-lid box is filled with sandwiches and another one with apples! The flimsies, jerricans and toolbox are very nicely done too and are very useful spares box assets that will find a place on my future models without any doubt.
My usual procedure of airbrushing my own Tamiya acrylic Mike Starmer Mix of mid-war British Khaki Green No. 3 with the wheel arches in unmixed Tamiya XF7 Flat Red. Note : Unfortunately the bright red appears much too vermillion in my pictures in spite of everything I tried with my lighting and camera settings… You have to take my word for it that when viewed with Mk. I Eyeball its bright red allright.
The Legend canvas roof was initially airbrushed with a chocolate-brown base layer which was followed by carefully airbrushing-in the khaki-sand colour over the higher edges and folds.
Both lacking from the Tamiya kit and the Legend upgrade are the forward ends of the securing ropes that are fixed behind the side doors. I scratched these from nylon thread, based on reference pics of restored Tillys. The shovel on the cab roof was replaced by scratchbuilt clamps because I wanted the shovel in use, off-vehicle. The shovel itself was replaced by the very well proportioned shovel by Resicast from their British Tanks Stowage set.
A lot of gear was carried by BDU vehicles, though pretty primitive to todays standards with remote controlled robot vehicles. In WW2 it was down to bascis with screwdrivers, pliers and a hammer! I already had my eye on the two great looking p/e Tool/Toolbox sets by Inside The Armour; I bought both and a selection from both sets is shown in the pics here.
Both Very Highly Recommended sets for anyone who wants to depict maintenance scenes; all stuff in these sets is pretty universal and not necessarily UK only. You need some TLC to turn the very small parts into something nice but thats well worth the effort, as I hope my pics are showing.
Just the WD Number on the side doors, from Archer set "AR35084W, WD Numbers White Non-Stencil". As far as I was able to find out, the UK-based BDU vehicles did not carry any other Unit Signs or AOS markings.
Road Section and Background Building. Both fine Reality in Scale products; I added some wartime British commercial enamel signs from Langley Models UK to emphasize the British atmosphere of the scene.
This is a temporary set-up only! In due time I will build a dedicated diorama with all items of the attached pics incorporated plus a half-dug in unexploded German SC250 bomb with the fuse detached and a couple of suitable figures, in the near future.
The basic build of the Tamiya part of the Tilly was quick and easy; the Legend parts took their time, but by far most of the time was spent on getting the Inside The Armour toolboxes and tools sitting pretty.
Comments, as always, are most welcome.
Happy Modelling
Jer