Martian Muster

This past weekend, I set up my games table in the garage and got all my Space 1889 bits out to photograph and inventory. A fair bit of this has appeared before in different configurations but everything is now mustered into more or less fixed units, and colour coordinated too! Taking the inventory also allowed me to figure out what pieces needed to be repaired and based up and where I needed to add some rank indicators to bring the units in line with the morale rules.

Oh'ktava'n's Experimental Company - The Stalwarts

All armoured with shield gunners in the first half company, cutters in the rear. Regular V0 or E0

Kas'trum Fencibles

An armoured front half company with a mix of cutters and shield guns backed by an unarmoured half company of cutters. Regular T0 or V0.

First Kas'trum Marines

A regular pure shooter company, under strength but equipped with rifled muskets. Regular V1S 

Loyal Kas'trum Company

A very conventional city state unit with shooters and cutters. Irregular T2

Kas'trum Civic Guard

An irregular unit with mixed shooters and cutters in the front and pure cutters in the rear. Irregular T2 or G2 seem most likely. Though they might get a boost for their fancy black uniforms. 

Pier Worm Roaster's Guild Social Club and Civil Defence Force "The Red Caps". (Left)
The Gentleman's League of Redweed Harvesters and Patriotic Rifle Corp "The Blue Bonnets" (Right)
His August Eminence and Grand Master of Secret Societies (Centre)

The Red Caps have been described elsewhere.   The Blue Bonnets are new comers who claim their constant battles against the armoured mud-crab make them far better shots than mere slug poachers. The Grand Master has his fingers in most occult goings on including the Ground Cleansers and possibly even the Cult of the Worm.   X3S or V3S. Rifled muskets.

Second Oenotrian Lancers - The Canal Terrors

After the dragoons were rotated out, a stronger contingent of lancers was sent in as replacements. Armoured and (obviously) equipped with lances, the Terrors are regular V0H so lots of close combat bonuses.

Num'da's Raiders

Boosted by brothers sisters and cousins in search of booty, the slightly under strength Raiders are Irregular T2.

Kas'trum Scouts

Again seeing an influx of mercenaries from the hills, the scouts have a half company of shooters and another of bow. Irregular T2.

The Horde of Antevaxx

The Ochre Horde of Antevaxx Rules for their use have been laid out in an earlier post. Irregular V1 or E1 for King's Guards

Mixed artillery

As mentioned in a previous post, the canal Martian gunners are used to mark when field pieces are on the Martian side manned by Askari crews. New additions are two howitzers, four RAFM Greek fire projectors re-purposed as light guns and two ancient ballistae - stats for which I have not yet settled on.

Moeris Lacus Dragoons

A new unit of light cavalry with musket and sword, the Dragoons are Regular X2. Alternatively they can act as Light Horse or mounted infantry.

Moeris Lacus Trucial Company "The Prince's Own"

Recruitment efforts have boosted the Prince's Own to a full company. As before they can also play on the Martian side as Askari deserters. Or they can act as Dragoon dismounts. Regular X2

Gerneral Sir Not Appearing in this Film

Ok he was still in the box when I had the rest of the Earth forces out to photograph.

Royal Marine Light Infantry

Still in need of an officer. These can, in a pinch, sub in as some sort of foreign European force. Regular V1.

3rd Civil Service Rifles - "The Paper Clip Boys"

A slightly over strength company of riflemen from the Dominion of Canada. Regular X2S.

The Queen's Own Something or Others

Good old regular line infantry. The blue facings suggest Guards but these can be used for any British unit as required. Regular V1

Gatling gun and Pack Options

Just a Gatling gun and a couple of types of pack animals to lug it around. Charging at the elephants gets a +1 down hill bonus - these are big castings.

Tri-wheel Draisine

An armoured rail vehicle to patrol my monorail.

Ewing System rolling stock

A quickly put together locomotive and rolling stock for my monorail. On the flatcar is  another tri-wheel that remarkably survived a fall to the garage floor. It is going into the shop for a re-glue and re-paint.

The To Do pile

From left to right, repair, rank and re-base.

All The Toys

All the toys on the table. It is 4' by 7'. I think I have enough for now....

Monorail Update

June was a modelling write off with many other pleasant activities taking precedence. I wanted to get a surge going over the last few weeks and here are some of the results.

Let's start with some track work:

All MDF with dirt for the road and tea leaves for the ground cover along the edges. More can be done but I could happily put this on the table now. Be sure to prime both sides to prevent warping.

Moving on to the draisine.  This is the same RAFM kit seen in my earlier post; Irr Wb (F): Cyclopean delights with a few modifications.

I plated over the rear wheel well, removed the left drive wheel and added a rail bogie unit.  My first attempt was with a modified diesel loco bogie but it proved too high to sit right with the Cyclops drive wheel. I may use it for a rail Dreadnought later   For my second attempt I hacked apart a couple of Bettendorf trucks  and shimmed them out with styrene to produce the above. A big part of both attempts was remembering that  I was making a wargame piece and not working rolling stock so epoxying wheels solid was a proper solution to the problem.

I went with a World War II inspired camouflage pattern. I am not happy with my painting but that can always be redone later.

I dry brushed the "steam dome" and boiler reinforcing bands which gives it more of a Steampunk than VSF look, again, that can always be changed.

What was important for me was to put aside perfection and just get the project moving again. Background aside, this picture captures the image I have had in my head all along:

On Patrol!

I am very pleased with the results.


Addendum: for a certain aquatic avian, some of my toys.

Guns for Patiala?

I have not had much time recently to work on anything, especially the monorail. This weekend is Father's Day weekend so I will be spending some time working on projects. Last night, I laid down a little more dirt on to the road portions of the rail sections and started thinking about further detailing. I will be using the track and trains mostly for VSF but rather just going with a reddish Martian sandscape, I decided to look at the terrain of the prototype in Patiala. Google brought up a huge number of clothing images - very strange but not much in  the way of landscape shots.  I was a little put out until I found this Wikipedia image. 

Yes it is a British WWI gun on a standard gauge railway and the only thing it has to do with the monorail is that Bhupinder Singh the Maharaja of Patiala, is looking at it. But - I am going to have to build one for the monorail - just maybe not quite so big.

25mm Monorail

This past weekend I was able to make considerable progress on a number of projects. The subject of this particular post is a 25mm scale monorail inspired by the Patiala State Monorail Tramway.

Rolling Stock

As mentioned in a previous post, my first inspiration was the RAFM Cyclops land wheeler converted to an armoured draisine as used on European Railways in the 20's and earlier. I had some ideas on this but also needed some regular rolling stock. Digging around the bits box - or bits shelf in my case I came across these cheap HO (1/87) scale north American prototype cars. I bought them and other assorted bits for a couple of dollars at a yard sale.  At 25mm (1/64), they are very close to the 6' width used on the Patiala.

Breaking out the razor saw, filler and epoxy putty results in this:

I am very happy with the gondola and flat car. Though the gondola is of metal and not wood construction, it has that toy like quality of its inspiration.  Key to making these cars was realising that I am making what are effectively terrain pieces and not actual model trains. The wagons will not have functioning wheels underneath just alignment blocks to keep them on the rail. The wheels on the original scale out to 1/16" radius and are not visible from most angles.  I am not entirely happy with the passenger car as it is a little too short for 25mm figures to fit in without bending down their heads. Not very comfortable for my pewter passengers. I will keep it for the moment with the intent of replacing it in the future. I might plate over the windows to turn it into an armoured troop car with firing slits.

Also in shot is the Cyclops in its draisine configuration with the rear wheel well faired over with epoxy. To its left is the remains of an HO locomotive power bogie. This will be reassembled to go under the Cyclops. The actual Patiala locomotive drive wheels can't be seen easily, but that look didn't really work here so I went with something beefier. As of this writing, the epoxy hadn't hardened up (cold in the garage where I do my work) so further conversion is pending. 

A proof of concept shot:

The wheels are spares from the Cyclops kit propped up against the wagons to test the look. When I started this project, I thought that more prototypical wagon wheels would be easily available from the Dollar Store. I went to three different stores thinking I could pick up a couple of cheap plastic farm wagons or stagecoaches but no luck. Cow herding and farming being out of fashion with today's youth apparently. I have written RAFM with a request to get some of their artillery wheels for the project as well as more Cyclops wheels for a VSF/Steampunk Saladin armoured car.

Trackwork

In the shot below is some HO/OO set track that also came with the loco and rolling stock. I measured the amount of tie projecting out from edge of the two rail track, set that as the offset on my scroll saw and ran the sections through. There was a little bounce from the blade action that gave a raggety look to the ties that fits in with hurriedly and cheaply laid rail. A band saw would give a smoother cut. I did not use the set track as I have a box of flex track to play with that gives longer continuous runs and tighter radius curves.

 

The next shot is the MDF combined railway roadbed and road way with the track line and road edge marked in. These are of course wrong as I discovered once I thought about it. The monorail is "handed" in that the track runs along the left hand edge of the adjoining road. This means that on a right hand curve, the supporting wheel is on the inside edge but on a left hand curve it is on the outside so the radii and placement of the track and road need to be adjusted accordingly. The widths and offsets were calculated from the prototype and the curves are designed so that a 90^o curve fits within a 12"x12" block.

 

Track laying and ballasting up. I stuck the track down with contact cement. Unexpectedly, the glue failed in shear when I was trimming the rail ends so the track needed to be re-glued and pinned. This is not an issue with normal flex track as it has holes in the ties for nails - holes that I had trimmed away earlier. The ballast itself is some very fine sand and dirt I have lying around as I am too cheap  frugal to go buy real ballast. It is wetted down with wet water - water with a couple of drops of soap to break the surface tension - then flooded with dilute PVA medium. The effect was not quite what I was looking for but I will live with it for now (which beats scraping it all off).

 
The result. There is a lot more work to do especially with the road way. I am going to make up a card form with the road profile cut out to shape the road a little more cleanly before sticking everything down.

To date this is one of those projects that gets better as you go along but will probably not do again.

More to come.