Tamiya 1/35 British 25pdr field gun and quad gun tractor. Building the alternative history 25pdr.

Tamiya 1/35 British 25pdr field gun and quad gun tractor. Building the alternative history 25pdr. Hitching a ride...

The Morris Commercial C8 FAT (Field Artillery Tractor), commonly known as a (Beetle-back) Quad, is an artillery tractor used by the British and Commonwealth (including Canadian forces), during the Second World War. It was used to tow field artillery pieces, such as the 25-pounder gun-howitzer, and anti-tank guns, such as the 17-pounder.

Although its sloped sides suggest otherwise,[3] the Quad was not armoured.

the body had a very characteristic slope sided, "beetle back" shape. It was all-metal and designed to facilitate chemical weapon decontamination, as well as to enable a gun traversing platform to be carried on the rear roof section.

In addition to 6 men, it was capable of carrying 24 complete boxed rounds of 25-pounder ammunition and at least 8 boxed anti-tank shells, together with vehicle and gun detachment equipment.

We'll start with that shall we?

Putting the wheels together... I'll paint as I go. One of the requirements of brush painting.

Winch and fuel tanks. I like the look of the kit out of the box. At the level I am, this is all perfectly satisfactory. No issues with the fit bar a little cleaning up as we go.

Adding suspension and other subframe parts. Most of it will be virtually hidden when we are done.

'Arm's length modelling' I'll call it. Does it look ok at arms length.

View from below.

View from above.

It's certainly looks tractorish so far.

Construction of the engine.

The tractor included a new four-cylinder engine mounted on a subframe and not directly onto the chassis.

I'm not doing anything special. Just straight out of the box... Much as I respect modelers who add all the scratch-built stuff, I want to represent what the box actually gives you. After all, it's what a tabletop modeler will commonly be doing.

Dropping the engine onto the chassis.

All done!

Fixing the front and the rear bumpers.

Building the tractor.

Painting the internal areas, picking out the details and weathering. Much easier to get into the detail before we put the cab together.

The seats get a rough dark brown undercoat.

We can tone it down with subsequent layers of lighter browns and khaki.

I'll be weathering the subframe too.

Now for the bodywork.

It will need painting first before I add the glass.

Notice how I chose to join the body to the subframe before adding the engine covers.

A little bit of PVA acts as filler.

That did the job.

I'm going to leave the bonnet (or 'hood' as you ladies and gentlemen of the USA would prefer to

say) up.

Bonnet or hood. it's totally your choice...

I think this is a beautiful little model.

And then there was camouflage.

I am fascinated by this camouflage scheme. It looks like this could really be effective on Malta specifically. Darwinian theories regarding camouflage in action.