THEM29 British Limber.

These products are not advisable for unders 14 years old unless supervised by an adult.

Simple kit, some assembly required. 

Can be used to tow both field artillery and horse artillery pieces. Suitable for both Africa and India and for all of the following: troops: Royal Horse Artillery (RHA); Royal Artillery (RA) field batteries; and all types of horse and field artillery units in the three East India Company armies.  The kit contains parts to suit any kind of draught animal: mules, horses, bullocks or oxen. For Indian bullocks use the bottom yoke in the right-hand photo, but for African oxen use the top one (same photo). The centrally positioned draught-pole fitted in the right-hand photograph is the one for bullock or ox draught, regardless of theatre. You can see that the locking pin at the bottom of both yokes fits into the small hole at the end of the draught pole. Before you glue the pole to the underside of the platform, be sure to slip the rope handle of the bucket onto the pole, so that it hangs down roughly centrally beneath the platform. In the EIC artillery arm the centre pole, (i.e. the one that's fitted in the right-hand photo), was also used with horses. Obviously you'll have no use for the T-bar yokes if you're modelling a horse-drawn unit. 

     In horse drawn units the RHA and RA did not use the centre-pole system, but preferred to have the 'off-wheeler', (an animal selected for its superior strength/pulling power) properly harnessed in. Since 'drivers' in the artillery rode the horses on the left-hand or near-side of each pair, the 'off-side' is the right-hand side, while the 'wheelers' are the pair of horses closest to the limber. That's where the other two poles on the sprue come into play. There are four u-shaped slots along the front rim/underside of the limber's platform, but the ones you'll need to use are on the far right and in the centre, so that the poles end up ideally positioned to run along the flanks of the off-wheeler.    

    Below on the left is a RHA team in India in 1860. The geographic setting is irrelevant, the more substantive point being that this is a unit of the Queen's Army not an EIC one. If you look closely at the off-wheeler, you will readily identify how the paired poles on the sprue are fitted and which way up they go. Note that the right-hand pole runs outside the wheel rim and joins on the hub of the wheel. As it's impractical to model a method of joining the pole on at the hub, you'll just need to ensure that the end of the pole rests on the wheel hub. Below right is a painting of the RHA by Harry Payne, which offers an even better view. In short, use the centre pole rig for EIC units of any type and for ox-drawn RA at the Cape; but for horse-drawn RHA and RA always use the two pole rig. 

        One final point is that the rectangular tool box goes on the platform immediately in front of the two square ammo boxes. All well and good, unless you are modelling a unit like the one below, in which gunners were seated on the ammo boxes, in which case leave the tool box off altogether.


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