Ferdinand...

I'm caught up in a mid/late war armour fest. Not content with the Wirbelwind, I took delivery of a really heavy bit of kit today:

I've never previously been tempted by the failure of Kursk (or was it just badly deployed in a tactical sense? I don't know), but not so long ago, I saw a photograph of a Ferdinand in late 1944, possibly involved in the Battle for Narva - that stunning defensive action. So, given my current inability to spend too much time doing anything, I thought another kit would be just the ticket, hence the beast. As for the Trumpeter kit, the mouldings are a bit fuzzy, which surprised me, but look at the tracks:

Oh joy! The bag contains trillions of individual track links, but, aaah, wibbly rubber band style tracks are also included - for which, much thanks. The running gear assembly has been broken down into pretty much as many sub-assemblies as one would think possible, so, I've only managed this much:

Of course, given the tension associated with the rubber band style tracks, it will be a few days before all the running gear is in place, the glue fully cured and ready for the tracks.

Meanwhile on the Wirbelwind front:

But, noises off the armour construction board are calling me to more colourful times:

While in the real world, today was a beautiful Autumn/Fall day in West Mercia, with clear sunlight lighting up the flowers enjoying a last hurrah. Here be 'Devil's Teardrops':

Finally, for the Very British Civil War enthusiast, or anyone with an interest in the ideologies that helped make the last century so awful, there is another free bit of my writing available. See the right hand column here, click on the image of the Soviet chap and access a free University of Warwick Pdf.