1:18th German Guard tower
Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 11:47 pm
AS I build my Diorama of a German camp, I knew I needed a guard tower or two. The only one who makes anything remotely close is the Power Team guard tower. But it's FAR from a WWII version, let alone an Allied version. So to cut down on time to modify, I decieded not to widen the tower and bring the legs out to the edges.
I knew I had an old Lionel floodlight tower, so I stole the 2 floodlights off of it for use in my 2 towers
The roof was the fun part. I didn't want to spend hours building one, so I went shopping. The closest thing I could find was in a Lincon log set. You only get one roof of the correct type and I had to buy 2 sets(Grandson will be getting a suprise). I painted the roof and cut some new roof supports out of Cherry wood.
THe original tower had a large 20mm type cannon mounted on a swivel. I removed the gun, then the swivel mount and moved the mount to one side. I then cut the gun supports off of the swivel as well as part of the floodlight mount and combined them. The new light will swivel and move up and down. Next was the machine gun, but before that, I added some plastruc "L" beam cut to cover the corners and added some balsa wood siding to go in between the "L" brackets. The Machine gun mount and gun are 21st C. It's been modified to swivel and go up and down too.
The original ladder was a rope type which I removed and added a plastic one in it's place. I still need to add the door at the top of the ladder as well as paint the whole tower(except the roof) brown. I also need to wire the searchlight - which DOES light up, to a couple insulators on the side of the tower for power hook up.
But all in all, I thought it's been a cool project and I wanted to share it with the group
The General
I knew I had an old Lionel floodlight tower, so I stole the 2 floodlights off of it for use in my 2 towers
The roof was the fun part. I didn't want to spend hours building one, so I went shopping. The closest thing I could find was in a Lincon log set. You only get one roof of the correct type and I had to buy 2 sets(Grandson will be getting a suprise). I painted the roof and cut some new roof supports out of Cherry wood. THe original tower had a large 20mm type cannon mounted on a swivel. I removed the gun, then the swivel mount and moved the mount to one side. I then cut the gun supports off of the swivel as well as part of the floodlight mount and combined them. The new light will swivel and move up and down. Next was the machine gun, but before that, I added some plastruc "L" beam cut to cover the corners and added some balsa wood siding to go in between the "L" brackets. The Machine gun mount and gun are 21st C. It's been modified to swivel and go up and down too.
The original ladder was a rope type which I removed and added a plastic one in it's place. I still need to add the door at the top of the ladder as well as paint the whole tower(except the roof) brown. I also need to wire the searchlight - which DOES light up, to a couple insulators on the side of the tower for power hook up.
But all in all, I thought it's been a cool project and I wanted to share it with the group
The General
Major improvement on the PTE tower and I love the light and roof.