UPDATE.

 With the onset of winter, as usual I find myself with a little more modelling time. I have now completed number 46 of my upgrade programme which gives 59,660 soldiers with the colours and only 618 left to finish, all of which are already at various stages of the painting process. This includes upgrade number 50, a small upgrade I recently identified which provides an additional GS wagon with drivers for each of my heavy artillery battalions.

For some time now I have been acquiring fresh stocks of materials in preparation for the building of my new 4th army. This includes paints, drawing pins (wheels), plastic card (horses), twisted wire (harness), decals  (flags), shelf support studs (field artillery), balsa wood (wagon bodies) and dowel rod (water trailers). Almost all of these items have been purchased by family members and will become my Christmas presents from them. I have reached that time of life where there really is very little else I want or need except more socks and who wants socks for Christmas !!!!

The new display unit I recently built has an extra row of shelves compared to the existing three units. This was done to enable the creation of a few extra battalions for the existing armies. Following my decision last year to provide each infantry battalion with a heavy weapons company I dismantled most of my dedication heavy weapons battalions leaving just one in each army, as army troops. I have now decided that each army should have two of these battalions.

Together with those I now have 75 battalions and regiments  to build for the new army. This is a total of just under 22,000 soldiers and about 2,400 vehicles and equipments. That includes some 490 GS wagons, 108 ammunition wagons, 275 utility trailers (field kitchens, water trailers etc), 228 guns of various types, 284 limbers, 447 light trailers (caissons, GS, signals etc), 156 other wagons (ambulances, forge wagons etc) and 390 heavy trailers (HQ, Medical, workshop etc). 

In order to keep track of what to build and to provide myself with a varied programme of different things to make, I have created a production list of 76 batches. Each batch is of a single type of vehicle, for example 30 GS wagons, 28 limbers or 24 forge wagons etc. I usually prepare all the components first then carry out assembly in stages over a number of days before painting the finished vehicles. I find that process works better for me than just making the equipment for a single battalion at a time. At the same time I also paint a battalion of soldiers which gives me plenty of variety on the workbench at all times.  Being a bit of a list freak, you will not be surprised to know that I also have detailed painting lists for the soldiers of each type of battalion too !!!!

I estimate it will take me at least five years to build the new army. No doubt during that period I will  identify any number of revisions to make to the armies, the current authorised strength of which is now a little over 82,000. There are always tweaks and changes to make which usually involve hours of fresh work. For example adding just one new soldier to each battalion would require the painting of over 280 new screw soldiers and it has taken me over two years to complete the current set of upgrades !!!! So overall this should keep me going until I reach that point in time where brain fog and overall debilitation means not getting up till lunchtime and then spending the rest of the day watching tv !!!! well actually ......