by Martin Waligorski

During the years I have had the opportunity to see and photograph a few thousand models on various contests and events. Frankly, there have always been more excellent models out there than we could ever feature on the pages of this magazine. In this article series I intend to pick some highlights off my photo collection – models that for one reason or another I found particularly commendable.

I photographed this diorama at IPMS Open 2004 and it still ranks as one of the most memorable diorama works I have seen. Entitled Der Abwasserkanal, it shows an imaginary incident in one of the German cities during 1945, where a paved street gives way to the weight of the Soviet T-34/85 tank, causing it to fall through into the underlying sewer tunnel. Technically this diorama is near-perfect, but what I particularly like is they way the main storyline breaks down into individual yet cohesive scenes in this diorama – the ill-equipped attacking Germans on top of the viaduct, the tank commander trying to defend his crew with a pistol, the unconscious driver being drawn out of his hatch. Everything beautifully packed in a challenging but most effective vertical composition.

The modeller is Per-Olav Lund from Norway.

This beautifully detailed 1/48 Arado Ar 234 has been built by Zdenek Sebesta of Czech Republic. His model has been based on Hasegawa kit, stuffed with lots of CMK / Aires resin plus a great deal of scratchbuilt detail, including such elusive things as traced rivet lines.

 This article was originally published in IPMS stockholm Magazine in March 2006