UPDATE.

I AM BACK ONLINE   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes at last our internet service has been restored after going down on 22 November. Service was resumed yesterday around 5pm after two OpenReach engineers worked at the junction box at the end of the road from 8am. After talking to them it is quite clear that our service could have been restored weeks ago but the administration at and between our service provider Sky and OpenReach has suffered a complete meltdown. The battle for a huge compensation package will now commence  !!!!!!!!

Of course over the past almost two months modelling has continued as has reading books. I will publish now the book reviews already written and will draft up the others over the coming days. As for modelling progress I have been working to carry out the changes discussed in my last posts. That is around the breaking up of the Heavy Weapons battalions and reallocation of Heavy Weapons companies to each Infantry battalion. In fact I have retained one Heavy Weapons battalion in each Army as army troops. The follow up step of this reorganisation was the creation of 4 additional Infantry battalions for each of my three Armies.

Overall the new requirements were for 3 completely new Infantry battalions, 9 new Infantry battalions using the redundant HQ companies from disbanded Heavy Weapons battalions as a nucleus and construction of 24 new Heavy Weapons companies to complete the provision of a HW company to each Infantry battalion as only 36 such companies were available from the broken up HW battalions. The resulting organisational changes will be made to the unit structure posts just as soon as I can.

This photo shows the troops for the first of the  completely new Infantry battalions,  some 358 strong, which have been fully painted in uniform colour with flags made and primed. The next steps will be adding rank and arm of service colours and two coats of varnish.

In addition, I an still undertaking the upgrading of Ammunition wagons and Heavy GS trailers  by adding spare wheels to all such vehicles. Also I am remaking light GS trailers by adding a "load" and canvas tilt to each vehicle so they are similar in appearance to GS wagons. To date I have upgraded 112 Ammunition wagons, 162 Heavy GS trailers and 226 light GS trailers which means I am about 65% complete. These numbers may sound fantastic but bear in mind my armies have about 7000 vehicles and equipments altogether.  Of course there are also a large number of new vehicles to construct to fully equip the new Infantry battalions and I am still building additional Cavalry squadrons to bring each Cavalry regiment up to a four Squadron strength. So far 12 of my 18 Cavalry regiments have been upgraded.

This photo shows a batch of 36 ammunition caissons for new HW companies with a handful of utility trailers destined for newly formed Infantry battalions. The metal parts have been primed and the vehicles are now ready for painting olive drab. I recently completed a batch of 36 new heavy weapons with which these caissons will be associated.

I hope my enforced absence from updating my blog has not been too off putting to any regular readers, I will do my best to catch up over the coming weeks with some hopefully interesting material.