From Schnuck to Mephisto

When I arrived in Brisbane to live in 1992 one of the first things I went to see was the WW1 German A7V tank "Mephisto". For those who aren't aware of this amazing vehicle, during WW1 Germany built 20 operational tanks, several were captured but this is the only remaining example making it one of the world's rarest tanks. The vehicle was displayed on the exterior of the Queensland Museum where I took a series of detail shots with the intention of maybe building a model one day in the future when I returned to modelling. Fast forward to 2015 and Meng released their beautiful A7V kit in 1/35th scale which I rushed to buy. I dug out my old series of detail shots only to discover that the model looked very different to the photos I had taken. I then began the massive task of researching what needed to be done to convert the Krupp built "Schnuck" of the kit to the Rochling built "Mephisto".

The kit.
Meng have created a fantastically engineered kit with a full interior and individual link tracks, so many parts!!

Once I had gathered the intel I thought I needed I began the conversion. As the Rochling build has a large center side panel instead of the 2 on Krupp tanks, the first job was to remove the rivets and fill the joins, also the exhaust mount holes.

The next happy discovery, thanks to Damien at the Qld Museum, was that the driver's tower would need to be scratch built. Mephisto was an early version that was converted from Female (MGs only) to Male (Canon and MGs) and hadn't been fitted with the applique armour to the driver tower sides. Schnuck had this added armour and as such the vision ports sit within the armour plates instead of on the surface, nothing for it but to buy some card and have a crack.

Next task was the one I had the most fear of, converting the canon, luckily I had taken some really useful snaps back in the day.

I started with the roof and the cutout in the front panels, then used the flat name plate part from one of the sprues to fabricate the gun swivel around a piece of dowel, glued the heck out of it and let it cure overnight in the vice.

I only had the one photo at the time to go on for the gun so I decided to use the kit canon as the barrel was almost identical. The kit cannon breech is quite different but as only a small amount can be glimpsed through the door and roof damage hole I made the call that it was close enough for me. The gun cradle and swivel mount were made from card and the infernal resin rivets.

The roof damage was next and I was fortunate to get my hands on some 3D scans that the Queensland Police ballistics unit had done while forensically examining the damage for the museum only a few weeks before.

I wanted the ammo case to have some damage so made a new one from sheet brass and bent it up. I was talking to the museum ANZAC exhibit curator only a couple of weeks ago and he was telling me they now have evidence that several of the shells went off in the box when the roof was imploded causing damage through the floor panels and basically destroying the ammo box, as Ned Kelly said- such is life.

The tracks are supposed to be a nightmare but I was given a tip by another modeller, instead of gluing the treads to the links and assembling the length you click the links together first, lay out the length then glue on the treads. Quick and easy. I weathered them up on the bench first and installed them onto the running gear after the floor and engine area had been painted.