Box Art / Packaging

HobbyBoss present a 100% new tooled German Panzerjagerwagen in 1/72^nd scale in their normal rigid top opener box. The contents are well packed and protected with additional foam wrapping on sprues which contain delicate parts. The condition of the contents as delivered were excellent with no parts off sprue, no broken parts and nothing warped due to inadequate packing.

The kit itself depicts the rail mounted Panzer IV which was generally mounted on a BP 44 armored train and would normally be seen mounted with the dozer blade in forward position. Technically the only part of the Panzer IV used here was the turret as the casemate it was paired to was not a Panzer IV chassis but was specifically designed for the BP 44 train.

The Kit

The kit is comprised of 6 sprues in total, Sprue A x 2, which contains all the parts for the railroad base.

Sprue D12 contains only the carriage base. Sprue D contains the upper casemate and dozer blade along with parts for bogie assembly. Sprue E focuses on turret construction and some parts for carriage assembly.

Finally, sprue F contains the remaining parts to assemble the bogies.

A small decal sheet is supplied with just 2 variants of Balkenkreuz. (dark and light variants)

The Build

This is a very quick and easy build. Construction of the Panzerzug and railroad base took me no more than 2-3 hours.

Fit was excellent, some care is require removing some of the smaller parts from the sprues due to the size, but none broke and there was no flash / very little cleanup required.

Assembly begins with the bogies which are later slotted into the lower hull/rail car, I recommend in hindsight, building the tracks portion of this kit first, to facilitate test fitting of the rail car to the tracks prior to gluing to ensure adequate fit.

If I were to build this again, I would certainly start with step 7 (railroad construction) before completing step 4 to alleviate any ill-fitting issues later in the build.

Fit of all parts are snug and presented no problems at any point.

Step 5 of the instructions call for construction of the turret complete with Schürzen add-on armor – again fit was excellent, no gaps, no fit issues.

Step 6 called for marrying the turret to the railcar and adding the last of the railcar peripherals to the rail car. As mentioned earlier, Step 7 then calls for the construction of the rail base, construction here is straightforward and well fitting, the base mostly snaps together and the rail tracks slide into the assembly to add additional stability to the structure.

Finally, the railcar and Panzer IV turret can be added to the base in preparation for painting.

Paint

The finished article was painted completely with Tamiya acrylics applied with Badger Sotar 20/20 airbrush.

The railcar was given a base coat of Tamiya XF-59, desert yellow. Over top of this some camo lines were roughly applied with XF-67 Nato Green and XF-68 Nato Brown. These are my preferred colors to use for German Tri-Tone Camo. I normally finish this look by applying AK Interactive Filter AK065 (Light Brown for desert yellow) over top to dull down the overall camo effect and draw some of the camo lines together a little more.

Tamiya panel liner was used in some nooks and crannies to complete the very light weathering effect applied.

The base was given an initial coat of Tamiya XF-63 (German Grey) and some shades of green were applied around the base also. The tracks were also painted German Grey.

The rail sleepers were given a good coat of Vallejo model color wood. Once dry, a graphite pencil was used to apply metallic effect to the upper track where metal would meet metal.

A pigment binder was added to the overall base and various pigments were applied to enhance the effect, earth pigments, grey pigments and green pigments were applied to complete the look.

Pros

• New tooling.
• Super-fast build due to well-engineered parts.
• Excellent fit, no flash.
• Good price point, affordable quality kit for the price.
• Nice packaging and presentation with clear instructions and good decals.

Cons

• There were several variants of this subject – it should be relatively easy to accommodate each of those variants as a choice for build as they do not markedly differ, considering there were many excess parts, those sprues should be redesigned to contain alternate variant options.

Many thanks to MRC for providing the kit and to IPMS for facilitating the review