So what's new?

Truth to be told, not a lot.

A week back at work while still recovering from being ill, left me with little energy or inclination to paint or model.

I've spent the weekend recuperating and messing about with various projects or projected projects to be more precise.....

Saturday saw me messing about with trains; before you ask dear reader, I have not embarked on a new or parallel hobby involving model railroads (once uncharitably described by some wargamers online as "the chuff-puff loony brigade" from someone who plays with toy soldiers ....). I know many wargamers combine the two (several on the VWC) and there are obvious crossovers....

So what was I doing? Two projects awaiting paint are RCW / Back of Beyond and Mexican Revolution, both in 15mm. Many were acquired several years ago. Both conflicts involved the use of trains, both armoured and as transports. I had picked up some IIRC either HO or N gauge flexi-track many years ago only to discover I should have got TT track or after some reading, HOm track to be precise. Obviously, no-one makes trains in "15mm" apart from Peter Pig and HOm is the track they suggest.

You can buy "collectable" trains of roughly the correct size to complement the limited offerings from Peter Pig , and these can be acquired cheap. Rolling stock is more problematic, but I'd picked up on spec a Roco modern train with old fashioned (to my eyes) carriages and some TT Triang goods wagons. Along with these, I had found a couple of flexi 3 foot HOm track and so I was seeing how well they worked...

What I need are longer goods wagons / box cars; I'm beginning to think these would be better scratch built or converted from HO......

I also spent several hours downloading a Battle Cry mini-campaign for Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily and Naples. I've seen this done in 54mm by a couple of bloggers. After looking at various ranges, I've decided I have enough SSM ACW and Napoleonic figures to do it in 30mm with crude plastic conversions, many just being simple paint jobs. I finished by hunting out various pictures online, many of which I'd had on a tablet but deleted when it ran out of memory.

Sunday was followed by hunting out some Megablitz OOBs for WW2 Western Desert that again had been deleted previously. While engaged in this, I had a chance discovery of a 1967 OOB for the IDF in Hebrew......

The download managed to scramble and delete parts of the layout. As I don't read Hebrew, this was no great loss but it had removed the Arabic numbers visible online. I recognised these as unit and artillery calibre numbers. So extracting these,  I spent a couple of hours adding, checking and confirming information I already had which proved very useful.

Many years ago I collaborated with a couple of US gents to work out a definitive IDF OOB and as best as we could of the Arab armies. For the IDF, there's a Russian source which seems to derive from a common source as the Hebrew one, but they differ slightly or rather this recent discovery, adds to the gaps....

The IDF are notoriously secretive, even about 1967 formations and contemporary sources reflect this with some disguised formation IDs; added to which is the practice of referring to the formation by the commander's name (first or surname) or nickname, and the cross posting of units.....

Anyway, I have managed to get a much better handle on the artillery. For the Arabs, the Jordanians are the most complete, followed by the Egyptians with the Syrians being anonymous below brigade level, apart from a few battalions. ToEs are also uncertain for all the Arabs.

So, my weekend has been trains and research.......