The now out of production BFG Imperial freighters are in my opinion some of the most characterful ships available for Battlefleet Gothic. Don't ask me why; I just feel that they are! I recently picked some up and since there's only really two base models, I decided to make a third one: a fuel transport. Yes, I am aware that
Heavy Fuel Transports are available from Forge World, however they are a bit bigger and I just didn't like the look of them. Or maybe I'm just a hobby masochist - I wanted to do a conversion!
So I moulded one of the stock transports, made a resin copy and then proceeded to chop out the centre section. After a little bit of cleanup it was ready to have a fuel tank installed. The main tank was made from a piece of styrene tube which had its ends capped with 1mm styrene sheet. I used my lathe to turn it into a perfect cylinder before chamfering the ends. The ribs were added using some thin styrene strip and the details along the bottom from small diameter styrene rod.
I had planned to either cut or pressmould the aquilas from something like a Space Marine bolter but since I've long since cleaned out any such marine stuff I had I couldn't actually find any! I could have scabbed some of a friend but I wanted to get the project finished this weekend, so I sculpted them myself. It would have been nicer to sculpt one and then pressmould a duplicate from it, but alas that would also have taken more time so the two aquilas (one on each side) are slightly different in size.
All in all it turned out very nicely indeed. I'll cast up a couple more and then all I need is to actually get some games of BFG that use transports in!
Next up: painting (but don't hold your breath...).
