Secenery and Shermans

This particular set up required a lot of elements.  The Arc de Triomphe is an end table from a furniture company.  It is probably my second most expensive single hobby purchase ever, but at almost perfect HO scale I could not resist it.  It is a giant, heavy piece of resin and is perfect for a Paris diorama or wargame.  I got it by mail from a company called Design Toscano which sells decor items.

The Eiffel Tower is four feet tall, and I got it at a building supply store called OSH in California, that has since gone out of business.  It was intended as outdoor lawn decoration.  I just purchased another one on eBay that is four feet tall.  This one will become the Tokyo Radio Tower which was designed after the Eiffel Tower and is taller than the Eiffel Tower.  This one will be painted red and white like the Tokyo Radio Tower, it's those colors to be more visible to aircraft.  The Tokyo Radio Tower was built in 1958.  Godzilla destroyed a similar but shorter tower in Tokyo in 1952 and the new, three foot tall tower will do double duty as both the Eiffel Tower and the Tokyo "Godzilla" tower.

The building in the left is a Christmas building from WalMart, they go for about $15 so they are very inexpensive.  I painted out all the "snow" and so it is usable for other times of year.  I temporarily added the sloping roof so it fits with the other buildings.  The bright pink and purple buildings are from Dollar Tree.  I get two, remove the roof from one and stack them to make a two story building.  They are a bit large and would likely work for 28mm.  My long term plan is to add a balcony and glue the building together and paint it.  They have a "hinge" on the side so you can attach two of them back to back and make a full building.  The back is open like a dollhouse.  They come with rather nice furniture that will be used for a number of projects.  I changed the movie marquee to the movie "Casablanca."  I showed MRS Bunkermeister and she said, "We'll always have Paris."  She gets me.

The trees are Christmas trees from Dollar Tree.  I washed them to remove the "snow".  They were about 40 cents each, so very economical.  The lampposts are also from Dollar Tree and are once piece resin.  The potted plants are also from Dollar Tree.  The roadway is from Michaels craft stores, they put this out for their Christmas buildings.  I try and pick up at least one of these vinyl mats every year.

This is another resin tank from Paul Heiser Models, it's the M4A6 Chrysler multi-bank engine Sherman tank with lengthened hull which did not see combat with US forces.  But I got a platoon of them anyway because they did see service with the US Army in training in the USA.

M4A1 Sherman from Paul Heiser Models, all plastic, easy to assemble, great kit, inexpensive and easy to put together.

This is an elderly Roco Minitank Sherman.  It has the rear deck of the M4A1 and the M4A3 vents so it's likely inaccurate unless there is some very odd Sherman with that deck out there.  I have only three of these unmodified Old Soldiers in my collection.

This one is a Roco Minitank Sherman with a Paul Heiser resin upper hull.  I was able to get a few of these about 30 years ago, and converted most of my Roco Shermans to the correct upper hull.