A while ago I was reading a book on World War One tanks, when i discovered that they where actually named as HMLS (His Megesty's Land Ship) XXXX. This of course got me started on the whole steam tank/victorian land ship idea, so i had to go out and by me a 1:76th scale WWI tank. The kit i chose was the Airfix Male tank (it was the cheapest!). Obviously, i could not simply paint it up and claim it was steam driven. Especially since i wanted it to represent a land ship used in the afircan campaigns of the 1890s. The track assemblies and sponsons where built stock. The lower and forward hull are also stock. This is where the stock btis end. I built a partially open bridge from various bits of plasticard and plastruct girders, complete with various control panels and speaking tubes. The two plates on the sides where to take Machine guns, buit unfortunalty I could not source any, so I'm claiming the land ship was rushed into action before the machine guns could be delivered from the manufacturer (damn these tardy Machine gun makers! Don't they know there's an empire to run?) Parts of the orginal upper hull have been added behind the bridge, but raised up with plasticard walls. I used as many pieces of the original hull in this modifed version as possible, so I would not have to add all the rivets myself! I also added a smoke stack, and a flag pole (the flag pole is infact the barrel of a 1:76 sherman tank, held up by the sherman's gun brace assembly). The flag is hand painted paper.
The galant crew of the machine consists of a Captain, two bridge machine guners, two 4 pounder gunner/laoders, a driver, a gearsman and an egineer/stoaker for the coal fired engines. Of these, three are visible on the bridge. They are Italeri 1:76 scale english soldiers, circa 1879. I painted them up in Khaki unifroms (they are actually from the wrong era for Khaki, but at this scale, it's hard to tell!) The name plate 'IMPREGNABLE' was printed out on a computer, and weathered a bit with inks. I also added cotton wool to the smoke stack. The whole thing has been painted in Citadel Commando Khaki, which was then dry brushed with bleached bone. I painted the tracks black, and dry brushed them with boltgun metal. Vision ports, gun slits and other holes where picked out with black ink. I added oil stains with Brown ink in a few locations. The Impregnable is a recently built ship, and has been operating in a sandy environment, so it has not aquired a coating of mud and rust just yet.
In all it was a simple, quick build, the only problem bieng getting the tracks on. They use the rubber tabs which you melt together, and unfortunatly, I melted them away! I managed to fix this by gluing them togther, with pins holding them to the body. The whole mess is hidden by the track guards.