SPA Modeler

Wow, I am so impressed with your collection, Mark! The breadth and depth of your collection is really something to behold. So much variety and all well done, too! I'm always amazed by how quickly you're able to turn these out, that alone is inspirational to me!

You might also enjoy seeing this model of my hometown. It was built my a local man whose father, Reuben Johnson, had sold my dad my own Lionel Super-O gauge train set when I was about 6 or 7 and who had an enormous multi-track of his own, set up in his workshop.

This incredible model of Old Town Cameron was a true labor of love for his son, John Johnson and now it's owned by Milam County. Here's a feature about it from a television program, "The Texas Bucket List":

https://thetexasbucketlist.com/2020/07/ ... n-cameron/

That was an awesome video! I always dreamed of having a huge layout like that for myself. What a brilliant labor of love! Thank you Gary for sending me that link!

Gentlemen, you're both welcome! I'm glad that I found that video. The model of Cameron has moved to another downtown location and is even more impressive than it was. As you watch the video, one sees Emil Zalesky's blacksmith shop. Well, our house is across the street from where Emil and his wife lived (not the shop, of course). He was a great neighbor, and a dead-ringer in appearance to Mikhail Kalasnikov, inventor of the AK-47! Our new neighbor still has Emil's old sign hanging over his storage shed. It's a great tribute to Emil.

Emil served in the US Army during WWII and had some funny stories about his service. He said he was in a foxhole on Okinawa when a buddy in a nearby foxhole cried out that he'd been hit. "Help me, Emil!" So, although he said he was scared to death, he rolled out of his foxhole and into his buddy's. "Where are you hit?", Emil asked. "In my leg, I can feel the blood runnin' down!" came the panicked reply. Emil said he rolled his buddy over and there he found a hole in his friend's canteen. That "blood" had been the hot water in it!

Before I really knew Emil, I rode a Honda 450 DOHC twin to his shop, needing a small frame crack welded. He walked out to the bike, squatted down and asked, "Honda, is that Japanese?" I replied, "Yes, it sure is." His reply? "You're gonna have to find someone else to weld that. I ain't working on no damn Jap anything! They tried to shoot me in the *ss in the Aleutian Islands!"

Awesome story Gary! That rocks!

LOL! Great story Gary!

Another month and another tour. This time we have some progress to show in the Shipyards so we'll head over there to see it before moving on to the Motor Pool. All aboard the trams and let's get this tour started....


Here in the shipyards we managed to get the base coat of grey on the LCAC. Later we'll get the center painted and then gloss for decals:




Moving on now to the Motor Pool, we have progress in this first bay with the Maus now ready for paint. All the bogies and tracks are installed and she's ready to go:



In the next bay we managed to complete the Lance missile and the launcher:



Later additional P/E and printed parts were added:



The missile was then painted to ready it for decals:



In the next bay, we got the decals applied to the HEMMTT with the radar trailer. They are all quite small so hard to see:



Later the additional detail parts were added, bringing this to the weathering stage:



Meanwhile in the next bay, the THAAD got decals and some detail parts as well, bringing this almost to the weathering stage:



In this next bay, the Patriot missile system got the base coat of green on it:



Later we installed the wheels, camouflaged it and then applied the decals. Detail parts to be added later:



Finally, in this last bay we got started on the Foreart HIMARS, starting with the chassis:



The chassis was later finished off and the driver's cab started:




And that completes another short tour of Maddog Manufacturing, thank you all for stopping in, comments are always welcome!

You’re an animal with all those builds!

Wow Mark - some superb stuff. I'm loving all these launchers and support vehicles and the Hovercraft is awesome!

Nice batch work Mark! If you want to mess with people, put the Maus in the LCAC…,