Hi all, i have an idea for a diorama that I’ve been mulling over for the past two years. I’d like to do a diorama of rail station. On one side of the platform will be a Tiger I with a crew receiving its Tropical uniform issue. On the other side of the platform i wanted to have a crew receiving its cold weather uniforms for the eastern front. I also thought that the train going to Italy with the Afrika korp tiger would have a nice passenger car while the train headed to the eastern front would have a G10 box car.
I’m not sure if i want to paint both tigers in grey or have one in afrika korp tan. I also thought that maybe I could have paint cans cracked open with tan paint in them as if the were going to paint them when the disembarked.
i realize that this may be historically in accurate in what I’m describing and I’d really like to tighten my shot group and make it to close to historical as possible.
What does everybody think and what could be improved upon in this scene?
Great concept — visually very strong and with a lot of storytelling potential.
From a historical perspective, having Tigers heading both to the Eastern Front and to North Africa/Italy from the same platform is rather unlikely, unless you set the scene in a large logistics hub in Germany around 1942–43. That would make the whole idea much more plausible.
The Eastern Front side, with troops receiving winter gear, works really well. For the “tropical” side, it’s worth noting that troop and equipment movements didn’t really follow a simple Germany → Italy → Africa flow, especially in the case of Tigers, which saw very limited use in North Africa and only toward the final stages of that campaign.
I really like your idea of paint cans and field repainting — that’s both historically plausible and a great visual storytelling element. You could even show incomplete camouflage or visible brush-painted areas.
For maximum realism, you might want to place the Tigers on flatcars (SSys).
Overall, with a clearly defined narrative (logistics hub, redeployment phase), this could turn into a very interesting diorama, although it might draw some criticism on the historical side, which could end up overshadowing the artistic work. A good rule of thumb is to either stick closely to references or make it clear that it’s an “what if” scenario.
@RicardoScouts thank you for the feedback. I do have a few Ssyms railcars from ironside. My thought was maybe, and i need to recheck references, that this could be set in Paderborn. If i remember correctly that is where the Tiger crews trained and the battalions were formed before they rail headed to the front. I figured the receiving tropical equipment and gear may have happened in Italy or while in Africa but I do remember in Han Von Lucks book he wore his tropical attire in Berlin. I just don’t remember if he was on leave or had been issued it.
It’s a great concept, if set in Paderborn I’d give it plausibility. This is going to be an epic project that could take you years of focused work. The completed diorama will be stunning, though. Go for it!
@Tojo72 i agree, I’d have to get two sets of transport tracks. So far I have the vehicles and the railcars. Tricky thing will be the figures and any other minor details like equipment and clothing.
@SSGToms I agree, i do believe the two battalions were at paderborn at or around the same time.
They should be the SSyms flatcars, which Gregory says he has; the SSys flatcars were rated for 50 tons, and the Tiger 1 is over that; the SSyms flatcars were rated for 80 tons
Along with, IIRC, removing the four outermost road wheel sections on each side, along with the side skirts, and the outermost panels on the front and rear track guards had to be folded up, to bring the tank’s width down to within the Berne loading gauge restrictions; the late-production steel wheels, gummisparende stahl laufrollen (rubber-saving steel wheels), had a different layout, so they didn’t need any wheels removed to fit the loading gauge (but still needed the transport tracks and removal of the skirts). The Tank Museum website has an article on the two widths of track. Interestingly, it mentions that, because the Tiger I and Tiger II transport tracks were not interchangeable, they were painted different colors – green for Tiger I and red for Tiger II, and when units were requesting flatcars for transport, they would specify color based on their tanks (i.e., “SSyms green” or “SSyms red”) so that they could be supplied with the correct transport tracks.
If the diorama is depicting a departure from within Germany, then the removal of outer wheels and skirts, and replacement of the tracks would always have been done; out in the field, if it was known that the train carrying the tanks would not go through a width-restricted section like a tunnel or bridge, then it might be just loaded straight onto the flatcar with the operational tracks in place, and just overhanging the sides of the flatcar, to save time.
One note: When the outer road wheel is removed, it exposes the wheel hub; tiger1.info has a page showing the pattern for the exposed wheel hub, which would likely need to be fabricated, as most kits won’t have provision for showing the exposed wheel hubs.
what if you had one tiger on a rail car with half painted in DAK and the other half eastern front (Grey or Camo) and then had guys like you mentioned, just a half brained idea
It’s a very interesting concpet, but I have to agree with Ricardo - not a very likely scenario even if it were a hub. I’ve been involved in loading vehicles onto German trains, it involves one unit at a time.Tanks were delivered to independent heavy Panzer battalions, as a group. not individually. There are just too many moving pieces to have two differtent units loading up for two different destinations at the same time.
What I do think might be more plausible (just spit-balling here) is two tracks. One has a brand new Tiger on the railroad car, with troops in the process of securing it. On the second track, coming from the opposite direction, a BR-52 and the first one or two cars in the consist have absolutely destroyed Tigers on them. The fresh troops, headed for the Eastern front, all have their heads turned to witness this arrival.
This was historically accurate early on - you could have a sign between the tracks for the approaching train - Kassel. Or hang placard of chalk the desitnation on a car or even the tank itself.
Edit to add photo - imagine your destroyed tank(s) headed in the opposite direction on the neighboring track. Good reference for how the tanks were loaded:
Just be aware that the above photo shows the Tigers with the “combat” tracks installed. Probably okay for short movements in an emergency. (Unless you’re fixated on the German equivalent of the TM)
@srmalloy my mistake i have the ssyms 80 ton railcars from ironside.
I was also thinking that maybe the afrika korp tiger could just be headed one way. I’ve thought of it not being in a loading position with guys having out around it while another Battalion loads going the other way.
@M70 As for the open paint can… i was thinking that soldiers would be soldiers and at least crack one open to see what’s inside.
@18bravo i need to reread my original post but wouldn’t it be likely if it was two trains passing in a rail yard? Or were the Germans strict on equipment flow and using certain rail yards for different fronts?
If I’m ‘memberin’ correctly Kassel is where newly built tanks underwent final assembly, as well as where wrecks were rebuilt. It’s certainly seems within the realm of possibility. To diversify, you could even have the BR-52 attached to the outgoing train with the new Tigers on it, and a swticher bringing in the wrecked Tigers ona couple of cars, having been separated from the hospital train with the wounded. My starter wife’s father came home on such a train.
@18bravo That wouldn’t be a bad idea. I like the idea of the chalk sign on the side of the train car. I thought maybe having the tiger going to Arika being on one rail line, it would have maybe a tan spot or two where the crew had painted it so they could put an afrika korp insignia on the tank as well. I’d have to look and see if that was done in Germany/ at the Italian ports or when they got in country. Another idea I had was maybe having a stencil made and adding it with the cans of paint I talked about earlier.
As for the tank heading to the eastern front I’m entertaining the idea of it just rolling through on its own line. Or stopped on a side track of a rail yard. Still mulling some ideas around if the sharing of a platform down the middle wouldn’t work.
I would look at photos and see if it was done that way back then. A passenger platform can certainly service two tracks. One platform trying to load tanks onto two tracks would be a logistical nightmare. Aside from that, when we loaded cars in Berlin we loaded from the end of the platform and drove the vehicles all the way down the length of the train. Tanks could be loaded from the side - but not the Tiger. Due to their weight, on SSyms cars they had to be circus loaded like we did in Berlin.
The Afrikakorps never owned any Tigers. No Tiger ever carried their “palm tree” logo.
All of the Tigers in Africa were painted RAL8000, a mid brown, with camouflage marks of RAL7008. Tiger “131” in Britain is a great example.
Two battalions of Tigers went to Africa. The 501 had unique Tigers that can be built only from a limited number of model kits. The 504 had standard “early” Tigers that are much easier to find in kit form.
These are soldiers of the 504 training at Paderborn. They have the standard black uniforms. We don’t know when they exchanged these for more suitable gear. The Tiger is fully painted and marked with its tactical number “111”. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything further to do there.
This is Bad Fallingbostel railway station. New Tigers arrived here to the training school, and we can assume that they left from here also. The station then, like today, had 4 track lines. The platform in the foreground ends in a spur line off to the left of the photo; these Tigers have driven themselves off the rail cars.
If you will pick an African Tiger unit, I will tell you who else was training in Paderborn around the same time. It’s plausible that they would ship off a couple of Tigers to different units on the same day.
This is exactly the setup at RTO Berlin, which was originally built in 1872 and serviced the Prussian Main Cadet Academy.
Same day, yes. Entirely plausible. Same time, no. Not possible given the one ramp scenario as in Berlin and the station you describe. The OP wants to show them at the same time.
Because circus loading relies on driving vehicles sequentially down the entire flatbed length of a single train, only one terminal ramp at the absolute rear or front of the rail spur is required. Vehicles would drive up this single, reinforced ramp and then transition down the coupled flatcars until the entire train consist was packed.
Because the tanks must be “circus loaded” by driving down the entire length of the train, you are physically building a single, unified block of vehicles. You cannot load a single train from that ramp and have the front half bound for Russia and the back half bound for Italy—the logistics of splitting, sorting, and redirecting those extremely heavy flatcars on the active mainlines would create a total scheduling nightmare.
The only way those tanks could ever end up going to two different destinations is if they were loaded onto a generic yard train, driven miles away to a massive mainline marshaling hub, uncoupled car-by-car by a switcher locomotive, and completely reconfigured into entirely new trains. But at that point, you are no longer at the loading ramp platform where the troops are receiving gear and painting the tanks, defeating the OPs original intent.
…that there was only one platform. Well done.
The only ramp photo I could find (it’s been a few years) when researching for my Berlin layout was this one, which doesn’t even appear to a permanent ramp:
