Saturday, November 28, 2015

The Season

Okay, now that we are full into the holiday season there is the distraction of my wife's quite large Lemax (and more) village that needs to be set up and operated until after the new year.  This is something of a distraction from my own hobby work but it keeps her happy and it is also fun since it is miniatures of a sort.  And I've hatched a plot to get some military figures into the mix by buying some 1/35th scale figures to 'sneak' in somewhere.  Now, I have to decide if I want to go Victorian and fit in better with what she has going or get some 18th century figures to 'push back time'.

I await the last back order rolling stock items prior to launching the steam train project.  And I've still two orders to place for the wagons to further that project which I've gotten started on.

I will try and take progress photos along the way to publish.

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If all went well, I've added back in the ability to gain followers for this blog.  Had closed it off because of some untoward and unwanted joiners a while back.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Wagons, Carts, Stagecoaches, Limbers, and Carriages - How many?

I first decided to 'standardize' my wagon trains with Peter Pig wagons and to also add another Peter Pig army supply wagon.  This freed up five wagons from the trains, four of which will become freight line wagons and one will become another army supply wagon.  And since I want some casual figures to lounge about the fort, I will order the camp back from Stone Mountain which means one more wagon that will also be an army supply wagon.  All well and good and not too excessive.

And then?

And then I discovered Blue Moon's generic wagons under the Napoleonic range!  Okay, a whole bunch I just to have there, the grain wagon, the engineer wagon, the 'supply' wagon with its cool load, and the barrel wagon.  And under the French equipment there is that rather mundane cart but it comes with a whole bunch of figures that will be a nice little addition (as if my insanely large collection needs more!) to my Old West set up.  And then I decided I need to add an element that just needs to exist - some manure wagons for the larger town of Anachronism and those carts, I'll order two, for the smaller towns of Alkali Wells and Cedar Creek.  And that means I need a couple of water wagons - will mean a bit of kitbashing.

And along with the 'standardizing', I've decided to use all Peter Pig oxen for the ox drawn wagon train. That means I can put the now extra oxen from other sources in front of a variety of other wagons.  And I will then end up with some extra draft horses in harness to populate various corrals.  Oh, and I also bought the Blue Moon pack of dead horses and it includes at least eight dead draft horses so I've added that element.

What does this add up to?  A whopping total of 78 vehicles and quite a variety at that.  Crazy as this seems it just tickles me because the ultimate goal is to have my three old west towns at least moderately crowded with wagons.  It's just how it was.  Plus there is all that space between towns in need of wheels rolling and the army needs to be well supplied.  I think this will do it.

So, my winter project is a combination of getting my old west steam trains and rolling stock together and painted and all of my wagons assembled and painted along with their teams and some of the people - like drivers and such but a bit more than that, too.  And just for fun, I'm going to try and get the remount herd for the army and the pony herd for the indians painted as well - and finish the six more buffalo I bought to make that herd a nice round 120 animals.  And maybe even the herd of pronghorn antelope.  I am cogitating on adding more long horns but I'm trying to resist.

Seems a worthy goal.  Just hope I can get close to achieving it.  I do still need to keep working on my French and Indian War figures and that might add a bit of a challenge.  But maybe doing a different period for a bit will rekindle some enthusiasm for that collection - though the real challenge is time more than enthusiasm.

Hope you are kind enough to wish me luck.