Takom Saint Chamond Early 1/35

Bonjour,


This time an old French guy. Le Char Saint Chamond.

This tank is well known to be a failure as it couldn't deal with the trenches without having its main gun stuck in the mud. Short tracks and a body that was way too long. It was produced as a commercial competitor with the General Estienne Schneider CA1. Well war is also a question of  greed and money!
When the tank could finally be used on flat lands it gave a quite good account of itself it seems, its powerful 75mm could easily deal with machine guns strong points or destroy enemies light fortifications. About 400 of the Saint Chamond tanks were produced in 3 types.
One of them is now in working order having been restored by the Musee des blindes de Saumur in France. It was originally exposed outside at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Being the last of its type it is good that it could be sent back to France for complete restoration.
You will find a lot of information about this tank online both in French and English some having been used by the US troops.

Here a link on Youtube...we can hear the electric engines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji2Y4Fg_6js

The kit by Takom is nice but a bit complex to assemble especially the Tracks and suspension. Especially I had to force on the tracks so that they could fit on the sprockets.It was a bit troublesome.
The rest is traight forward though and gives a nice model...It is huge indeed and really looks like a box on tracks...But it was the case with most tanks of the time, right?

I added a metal barrel and created the rear tools rack and tools that you could see on most vehicles.  Since it was a field add-on several types existed.. Also I added the big light that was located on the top of the front of the tank.
On many pictures one can see the tanks covered with a big amount of equipment used by the troops who found it convenient to use the colossus as a truck...

I reproduced the most difficult camouflage made of brushed stripes of various colors that were supposed to hide the shape of the tank and especially the vision slots. It took me days to finalize it but I am quite happy with the result.

Now to the pictures!

And in colors