One of the wildest trucks ever--this is a 1944 Pacific M-26 with a Fruehauf M-15 heavy trailer. In combination, it was referred to as an M-25. It's popular nickname was the "Dragon Wagon." It was designed to retrieve broken or damaged American tanks from the battlefield, primarily the M-4 Sherman. It was rated at 40 tons capacity but it was used to haul all kinds of heavy loads from LSTs to captured German Tiger Tanks (70 tons).

Tamiya does a kit in 1/35 scale. You can get just the truck or the truck and trailer combination. Naturally, I jumped in with both feet.

And naturally, I'm loaded up with reference material.

I've wanted to build one for awhile and finally got this kit started. In addition to the trailer, I also have a Sherman to use as a load. I'm pretty much out of my league here so I'm having to pay very careful attention to the instruction sheet. If you're not careful, you can get things on upside down and backwards (ask me how I know. :O)) )

Most of the action at this point is underneath. The instruction book has 29 assembly steps for the truck, with multiple assemblies for each step. I'm on step number 5.

Here I've set the front and rear axle assemblies on the chassis. I can't glue anything down yet. There are areas to paint underneath these assemblies so that old myth about building an armor model, then painting it doesn't apply here.

Then some careful pre-fitting to ensure that I have the pieces together properly, and I got one side of the chain drive done. There are some photo-etch kits for this kit, but since I'm a rookie here, I'm going to stay pretty much out of the box. Forty-five minutes of careful work gets you both sides of the chain drive assembly.

Once I'm done with the truck, I can start on the trailer--another 11 steps. Imagine if you will, a Charlie Rowley all-plastic model truck assembly kit. Think that's what I have here.

Keeps me entertained.

Terry