15mm British passengers. Finally!

Regular readers may recall me bemoaning the lack of seated 15mm British infantry figures. Drivers and tank crew, no problem, but infantry? You are out of luck. Anyway, while browsing the Skytrex website after scoring my shiny new Italian 75mm howitzers, I came across.... 'British Halftrack Crews' but looking at the photos they were clearly what I was after. 

And what a bargain they are. Over 80 figures for 19 quid. That is well under half the price of Peter Pig. They come cast in groups of 2,3 or 5 figures, with a range of weaponry (mostly rifles) and all wearing tin hats with varying degrees of scrimmage on top. They are also nice crisp castings, deeply engraved with very little flash, so I guess the moulds don't get a lot of use.

This heap of lead is what was left over after I'd painted some. I needed six truck loads, three for the desert/Med and three for Europe.

Here are the desert chappies. Three sets of three figures and three sets of two. They are cast in long trousers but I did them in Khaki Drill uniforms and filed a lot of scrim off the helmets. I did some with hessian covers and some with tin lids painted sand.

And the NWE troops. These are the groups of two. These are in khaki serge with green lids and scrim. All the figures got an inkwash and a drybrush which really helped emphasise the details.

Now, one slight complication was that my chosen transport for NWE were these very, very old Peter Pig Morris 15cwt trucks. They will do nicely for Motor Rifle troops, but I also have the option to use them in some larger lorries too. All well and good, however....

The 'slight complication' is that they have the tilts firmly glued on! I bought all of these second hand at various bring 'n buys, so I've no idea what they are glued on with. Please God, don't let it be two part epoxy...

I tried levering them off with a screwdriver, but nothing doing.

So it very carefully ran a razor saw along the join where the tilt meets the body and down the back of the cab. Once I'd made a bit of an impression I was finally able to lever them off. Thank goodness for the lousy adhesive qualities of superglue! Then I just had to touch up the paint on the bits of bare metal.

Next job was to make up the inserts and seats. Although the back of the truck looks quite big, in fact it is tiny thanks to those two annoying ridges cast on the inner edges. Eventually I found that only a 15mm x 14mm insert would work.

And even that fits quite snugly. Having got it in I had to use a screwdriver to get it out again.

Anyway, into production line mode. The inserts on the right are for the 15cwt and the ones on the left are for my desert 30 cwts which are more roomy. The benches are made out of the box sprue from Zvezda kits, which are the perfect height for sitting 15mm figures if you want their feet on the floor. Matchsticks are too narrow.

Once the glue had dried I just painted them a neutral khaki.

And here are the desert chaps in their steeds.

And the European ones, although at a pinch they'd do for desert/Med too.

And I also have a pile of separate tilts I can use as required. I've actually got a big heap of spare tilts now, and tbh I'm struggling to think when I'd actually use them as I seem to prefer open truck bodies these days.

Anyway, I'm very pleased to have finally got some of those, and it means my Brits can now ride around in pride like the Russians and Germans.