HobbyBoss 1/72 German 80cm K(E) Railway Gun 'Dora' (82911) - Demo Build

[davecov]

My latest update on my Dora build.

The bogies are almost completed now. I still have some decals to apply and glue some steps to the bogie sides:


Although I have assembled many parts, there are many more to go. Here are the components for four ladders and there are another two slightly, different, ladders to assemble:


The cleaning up of the ladder sides and rungs took a long time:


Here I am assembling four ladders with the other two ladders already assembled. These ladders took a long time to put together but I found it best to glue the rungs two at a time, let them dry and then move on to the next pair of rungs:


Once the ladders were assembled, I started cleaning up some railings and another pair of ladders:


After those were cleaned up, it was time to clean up a lot of pipework:


The pipework was then glued to the outside faces of the cradles:


Other pipework was fitted to the outside of the mounts:


There were four each side:


The cradles dry-fitted in place:


That is all for now.

Dave

[adt70hk]

Hi Dave,

Sorry got behind on this. That's coming on nicely. I saw one of these at a show last weekend and so got a proper impression of just how big it is!

Keep up the great work.

Andrew

[Guest]

I finished reading the book Dave mentioned, and must say it’s very interesting. Though it covers German railway artillery in general, the bulk of the book is about Dora, and what a ridiculous piece of kit it was … Now, I already knew that, of course, but it turned out to be even worse than I thought. It even goes into some detail about Hitler’s typical interference: during the only combat deployment — which, incidentally, took two months’ hard work to prepare and around 5,000 workers in all, to build a double railway of about 2 km long, with a third track alongside for about half the length and the need to make a cutting through a small hill — it fired all of 48 shots. When some of the results of these were reported to Hitler, he responded that some of the targets attacked were not worthy of a gun like this, because it had been designed for use against concrete fortifications rather than underground ammunition storage. So, he ordered that it only be used against concrete fortifications …

As Dave said, the book has very good photos of the real thing, especially the ones of it being assembled, and also interesting that they put a chapter about models of it in the back. Even a picture of someone’s second (!) scratchbuilt paper (!) one in 1:87.

[stillp]

Slightly off-topic, but has anyone modelled any of the British railway guns?
Pete