Sorry Uncle-Heavy, what arrows :?
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With the all-metal return rollers, the outer surface of the drum (that holds up the track) might not be scraped shiny, but it will have dirt ground into it, so you may want to paint them with a drybrush of whatever “dirt” weathering you add to the tank as a whole. The ends will be OD, but there may be grease seepage around the axle that is best done as a dark stain. If the tank is operating in muddy terrain (they do have some in North Africa!) then all bets are off - the mud just coats everything except where it is scraped off…
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The all-metal track support rollers, just like the all-metal idlers, would be worn to bare metal on the circumference by the tracks and on the ends where the end connector teeth rubbed them. (The later also applies to the wheels.)
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The turret stripes and stars were yellow in North Africa, at least for the earliest vehicles. There were white-painted vehicles at times, too. The white turret stripe was a marking for the Armored Force when training stateside, but there were stateside tanks with yellow stripes and stars, too.
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When you have link and length tracks you don’t want a movable sprocket. The cylindrical elements can turn or stay fixed. The reason is that a moving sprocket will change how the link and length sections are positioned in the run and you can end up with a rigid link running too far onto one of the corner wheels. Ideally the kit designer should key the sprocket to a single position matching the track part layout.
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On the Takom M3s people have a tendency to build the tracks so they look something like a King Tiger’s, with a steep drop to the rear of the sprocket and flat across the rollers.
They should very gradually droop down. Nominally they wouldn’t contact the first roller
but there is some variability even in properly tensioned tracks.
When moving and the upper run is under tension, the track barely touches the first roller, if at all.
KL
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