UPDATE.

Happy new year to all. I am sure we all look forward to a better 2021 than 2020 turned out to be, hurry up with my vaccine please !!!!! Since my last update before Christmas I again have had little modelling time. Despite the lack of normal festive activities we seemed to remain busy although I confess I have no idea what we actually did to pass the time.

That said I have spent some time reviewing the organisational structure of my armies and have identified a number of new potential upgrades. Most of these involve the introduction of the rank of corporal to the armies. I have long thought there should be a "senior" soldier grade and having corporals seems to fulfill this need while also improving the command structure and of course increasing the size of my forces, always a major ambition. In addition I have decided to increase the size of Heavy Weapons battalions and QM Transport Companies . The net effect of the introduction of all this is to increase the strength of all three existing armies by a total of around 6,600. 

Additionally I plan to build the new fourth display unit a few shelves larger than the current structures. This will enable an increase in the number of Cavalry regiments and Heavy Weapons battalions in each army as well as obviously allowing for a fourth army. These extra battalions and regiments will add another 1,500 soldiers to the totals  giving an overall strength, including a brand new fourth army, of a little over 80,000. That said my wife is not keen on my plans for another display unit so I clearly have some more work to do on that matter. 

In the meantime I can make a start on the "corporal" upgrades to keep me occupied for the time being. Unfortunately there are few additional vehicles needed which is a shame as just painting thousands of soldiers can become monotonous without the fun of constructing and painting vehicles. That said I have always imagined that my heavy "house" bodied wagons and trailers, as used for medical, command, signals and workshop purposes, were equipped with fold up canvas extensions stored on the roof that could be folded down to provided additional working space much like awnings on caravans today. I think I shall now design some sort of fitting to represent that idea and fit the result on each of this class of vehicle. Building and painting such extras will be quite a substantial task and give me another source of modelling fun.

At present I am working on the very last of the "old" upgrades to my armies. This consists of a batch of 35 GS wagons and about 190 new Pioneers. The GS wagon bodies have been built as shown below.

The next steps will be to add the "pole", wheels including a spare and the horse mounting block before moving on to painting. The Pioneers have been fully painted with the standard uniform colour as shown below.

The next steps here will be rank and arm of service colours then varnishing. When these two sets of work are complete my current three armies will be finished to existing organisation tables with a total strength of 51,696 soldiers. As always any comments on any of the above would be very welcome indeed.