Universal Carrier

Speaking of universal carriers (or I will be tomorrow), this one isn't automated, sadly, but does provide more detail on the ins and outs of the markings and placement of some items. Shame I'd forgotten these pictured from Bovington when painting the automated carrier!

Apparently there were nearly 113,000 of these built by 1960, solely for use in Commonwealth armed forced. This would make it the most produced armoured fighting vehicle in history*

*If Wikipedia is to be believed.

M10 Tank Destroyer

And another useful set of photos pulled form the Draft queue that is related to the recent painting spree.

The M10 is one of those tanks that I clearly got to near the end of the day and forgot to actually take full shots of. I did get a few detail shots that might be useful to someone though. I'm interested to note that the turret has loops on the side of it. these are not present on the kit, though this one doesn't have the rear section of the turret, to it may be a different version of the M10.

Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Busy

So last weekend we went to Dr Who, which you saw in the last post. The week before that we went to the giant exhibition over at Leavesden Studios, just north of London, all about one of the silver screen's greatest wizard. One who stands along side the greats like Gandalf the White, Merlin and Raistlin... defeated the greatest literary evil and grew up in a cupboard.

That's right isn't it?  Oh wait, no. Harry Potter. We went to see Harry Potter. I did wonder why we didn't get to see Sweep or Sue anywhere in the puppets section!

The Harry Potter Experience may well be bank breaking, but if you get an early enough slot, it is well worth going. The tour takes you through lots of the sets, like the Great Hall (which is a lot smaller than you think from the films), the Potions classroom and the dorm rooms. Scattered through these sets are countless video interviews with cast and crew explaining some of the props and different departments.

Once you're finished with the interior sets you get the chance to stop for a butter beer (very nice!) before proceeding to some external sets, including the Knight Bus and the giant chess set. Auntie enjoyed the Butter Beer too.

After the outside area you go back indoors to the Creature workshop and all the design areas. This sparked a bout of "Why did no-one tell me this was a job at school?!" from a few of us as we went through the prosthetics, monster workshop and draftsman sections.

A journey in space and time...

Today wasn't a day for painting or gaming... though it was suitably geeky none the less.

A large group of us ventured over to Cardiff Bay for the day to visit the Dr Who Experience and marvel at this piece of Sci-Fi history.