The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

Some of you have asked to see where I am with my figures (in a diorama/wargaming setting). So today I laid out those I have completed so far...

An overview


French Old Guard and Cuirassiers advancing



The Emperor viewing his artillery, sappers and Carabiniers




La Haye Saint defended by the 95th


The Dutch advance


Highland squares and the KGL screening




Prussians support the British Hussars


Whynyates Rocket Troop tucked behind the squares

Glorious. Are those Carabiniers at the top of the first picture?

Nice!

Thanks very much for your interest guys

Spaceowl wrote:Are those Carabiniers at the top of the first picture?

The Carabiniers are in the bottom right corner, next to the French artillery

Excellent, it's great to see your figures in a wargames/dio pose like this Ratch.

Look for the update in about 6 months Shaun

It would seem that some manufacturers got into a muddle when sculpting their RHA figures. The uniform is described as being the Tarleton helmet with dark blue turban, brass chinscales, and bearskin crest with white plume on the left side, and brass peak edging, dark blue dolman with red collar and pointed cuffs, yellow lace and buttons, white breeches and hussar boots or grey overalls with a red stripe down the outer seam. Gunners wore shoulder belts (replaced by waist belts) from which their 1796 light cavalry sabre was suspended; both styles were worn until after Waterloo. Officers wore sashes; initially crimson silk until 1815 when hussar-style barrel sashes were adopted. Officers might also have sabretaches and pelisses.
Royal Artillery Drivers wore either a dark blue coat with scarlet collar and Swedish cuffs with yellow lace or one with pointed cuffs without the braiding across the chest but a frame of lace around three rows of buttons. Both red and white turnbacks are recorded. Officers wore epaulettes and had scarlet facings with gold lace. The Tarleton helmet as the RHA. White breeches and black gaiters were worn at home and grey overalls with one or two red stripes down the seam on campaign. They were armed with the 1796 light cavalry sabre.
I have Airfix 01746, HäT 8003 & Esci 233 sets, all purporting to be of the RHA. Let's take a look:

on the left an Airfix figure and centre left a HäT figure, both correctly attired in the RHA Dolman. Centre right and right are Esci figures. The are a complete mish-mash wearing a tailed coat like the Royal Artillery Drivers wore. CL is painted as RHA & R as RAD.


Turn them over and the confusion continues. The Airfix and the HäT figures are both correctly attired again, but the Esci figure has braid over his chest making his front RHA and his back RAD. Once again CL is painted as RHA & R as RAD. This figure has the wrong coat for the RAH and no epaulettes for an RAD officer.

And it doesn't stop there. Here are the Airfix limber men and riders.


The limber men are attired as RHA but the riders have the mixed uniform with a tailed coat with no lace on the back but a fully braided chest. Their cuffs are pointed with Hungarian knots above the points.
The dilemma is whether to paint the figures as they are moulded or ignore the incorrect engravings and paint the correct lace. But again this leaves Esci's unfortunate short tails. Would the RAD have assisted with guns in the heat of battle? Gunnery appears to have been a very specialised job with lots of training. Probably not many (if any) Drivers would have learned by observation. Discipline was bad in the RAD ranks because the officers had their men spread widely in the gun batteries.

Amazing research Ratch and as always great patience and attention to detail with your figures.

Cheers mate
I have copied this method of mounting figures for painting

Drilling the holes is tedious, but it does help to reduce the retouches due to handling

Nicely done, Ratch and the history and comparison of the figures makes for interesting reading, thanks for taking the time to enlighten us!

Thats an impressive layout.

Cheers guys
Here I've done a simple conversion, taking HäT Rocket Troops, an Esci and an Airfix artillery figure and utilising some of the heads I'd previously cut from HäT 8025 Waterloo Dutch Infantry to make them into Heinemann's Brunswick Horse Artillery

They had black uniforms

Good stuff, Ratch and I look forward to seeing these black clad troopers. Are most of these small scale figures still made out of that soft polythene Airfix used to use and that never held the paint very well? I remember painting Airfix soldiers in my youth and after being handled once or twice the paint began to flake off in chunks

Cheers Shaun, the plastic varies from the soft stuff that you remember to fairly hard plastic. Most of these ones I've been doing are ones I first painted in enamels more than ten and up to thirty years ago. Using acrylics I was finding the paint rubbing off slightly with handling - hence the change to painting them on cocktail sticks. This virtually eliminated the need to retouch and the quick drying time of the acrylics means I'm whizzing through them. I fixed the heads and painted the black yesterday. All the rest has been done today.