Chepster

I don’t know how historically accurate this is but it looks great - a real imagination catcher

165thspc Patron

Dmitry. That is VERY historically accurate!

I had much the same idea but did not have the stones to attempt it even using the available plastic models.

Tip of the hat. Kudos. We bow to your modeling prowess and fortitude!

Here are some of the reference photos that Dmitry has attached around the base of his diorama:

These photos all show oil filled electrical transformers of the day. Modern transformer designs remain still basically unchanged. A large oil filled vessel (a fluid not unlike motor oil) that insulates the electrical components but also draws the heat produced away to be dissipated. Some transformers may just have welded on fins (or veins) on the outside of the vessel used to wick off the heat. Others will actually have “U” shaped pipes also containing oil that by convection draw out the heated oil at the top and as it cools it sinks to the bottom of the transformer causing a constant cooling flow around the coils.

Hohenstaufen

Stunning work - especially seeing it’s all cardboard not a plastic kit. Interestingly, the tractor factory in Kharkov was producing T34s when the Germans captured it. They put it back into production making them for the German army and SS; “Das Reich” had a battalion of them at Kursk. I think for a while the factory was run by the maintenance unit of II SS Pz Kps. There are pictures of it in the old Almark book “Waffen SS at War” by H. Walther.