Aberdeen Model Railway Club Exhibition 2011

It has been several years since I attended one of AMRC’s exhibitions. They seem to have changed venues a couple of time and I lost track of them.

Fortunately a friend of mine, Jeff, let me know that this exhibition was coming along and I managed to slot it into my busy social calendar!

I am not particularly enthusiastic about the whole model train hobby, however I am a pretty much interested in looking at any model making endeavours and ,if nothing else, you can usually expect to see some high quality terrain! I had the added bonus this year, that I took my son along, and he is developing a keen interest in all things mechanical/engineering based, so it was great to see his fascination with all the train layouts (it probably means we will have to get a train set in the near future…).

OK, so lets have a look at some of the photos I took!

First off as we entered the exhibition hall we were greeted by this mountainous display. A really nice look to it, although I would have preferred it if it hadn’t been quite so straight. What would have really made it for me would have been if they had put a small side valley, cut by a small river or steam, somewhere along it’s length, this would have needed a small bridge for the track to cross as well. Still, a very eye catching display!

This layout has much more of an industrial feel to it. Lots of “rust and dust”. There were some nice touches that can’t be seen on the photos, like the flicker of a welding torch in one of the engine sheds.

Moving along, we have a nice display, that I think was set somewhere in Germany or Austria (Note to self: I should photograph the signs for these tables as well). A lovely mix of town and countryside, with some very nice model building. I could quite happily have have played a Flames of War scenario over this layout!

This was one of my favourite layouts. It was actually a commercial display by the company (http://www.tgauge.co.uk/) selling the kit on the layout. This is reputedly the smallest scale model railway commercially available, and at 1:450, I can quite believe it! I was really taken with it, and if we do decide to invest in a train set in the near future I may well be looking do it in this scale. You can just do so much on a very small table…

The problem I find with a lot of these club displays, is their linear nature. I suppose as a wargamer, I am used to seeing rectangular tables that get quite sizable at shows. These long thin layouts do disappoint me quite a bit. These two photos for example, show some lovely work on a couple of bridges crossing a small river. Really well executed, but when the display is only around 400mm deep (at that point), the whole effect is pretty much wasted.

Here is another very linear display, however, I did like this one, if for nothing else, it’s shear size and attention to detail were worth seeing.

This section of a display caught my attention for it’s shear craziness. I don’t know if it is based on an actual bridge (somehow I doubt it), but even if it is, it looks like it is the centre piece from a Wily Coyote or Wacky Races cartoon…

Looking back at the photos I took, I must have a thing about bridges, maybe they were just the most interesting features, to a non-railway modeller… anyway here is another one!

Both my son and I were very taken by this wintery display. In some respect, it was similar to the one in the first photo, however it had far more variety in the design of the landscape, even under the layer of snow…

As well as the railway modelling, there were a few other genres on display, here we have some Meccano. I  find Meccano fiddly and, frankly, frustrating. So I am always impressed when I see well made and “finished” Meccano models.

I took a couple of photos of this windmill, as I am in the middle of designing a laser cut windmill kit at the moment. It will be very similar to this one, appearance-wise, although I am initially making it at the 25/28mm scale (this one is 1/72).

I was pleased to see that Aberdeen Wargames Club put on their Battle of Harlaw game. I have missed seeing it a couple of times and having heard about it from Sholto Humphries of Scheltrum Miniatures (who is a member of the club), I had been wanting to see it for a while.

One of the things I was most impressed with was that a couple of the displays let kids have ago at driving the trains. My son had a great time driving this large scale set around a circuit.

One of the things that usually disappoints me with these model railway exhibitions is the amount to trouble some of the displays have getting their trains to run. There was plenty of that again today. This pair of crane was a good example, embarrassingly enough for the chap running it, as he had quite an audience of kids just waiting to see it pick up the container and place it on the train. He did get it to work eventually, but I wouldn’t call it smooth by any stretch…

Finally, just before we left, my son got his second go at driving a train. This time a much smaller scale, but with a lot more to do. He drove the train out of a siding, coupled up with a carriage, drove it about a bit, and finally decoupled it. I think this one really made the show for him…

So, to sum up, I almost didn’t bother attending the exhibition this year, and only went along after my son pleaded with me to take him. We ended up having a great couple of hours. Well worth a visit.

I have the TARGE Wargames Show in Kirriemuir in just over a week and a half, my calendar is so full at the moment!

Halloween 2011

Being British and of a generation that didn’t celebrate Halloween (until the retail industry took it up as a way of making some quick cash), this time of years has always been more about Bonfire Night (Guy Forkes Night) than Halloween to me. However, now that I have two boys that are very much wrapped up in modern culture, I have more or less been dragged into the Halloween “festivities”.

I hasten to add that they wont be Trick or Treating, as we don’t believe in blackmailing the neighbours for sweets.

I have carved a pumpkin for the last couple of years, and rather than stick to the simple ZigZag style scary face, I thought it was about time I tried my hand at something a little more adventurous!

I did a quick hunt around the internet for some simple ideas and came up with this one.

Still fairly simple, but certainly more effective than my previous attempts! To give it it’s full effect here is a photo with all the lights off!

Model Making: Painted Laser Cut Snake Oil Wagon

I have shown several on my laser cut models on this blog and generally they have been well received. However, a few people have asked to see the models in their fully finished and painted state, to see how well they paint up.

I have spent so much time developing new models that I haven’t really had the time to get them painted up myself. I am planning on changing that in the near future though.

In the meantime, a friend of mine, Del, has just finished off his first Snake Oil Wagon, and I got a couple of photos of it with my phone. They are not great photos and I have done as much post processing as I can to make them presentable.

Del has two of these wagons and for this one he decided to do some Photoshop work to create the posters on the sides. However, he has assured me that the other one will feature the engraved ladies faces fully painted (I actually cut some spare sides for him so that he could practice the faces and see what style worked best).

Model Making: Pulp Scenic Ideas

As I slowly progress my Pulp Sci-Fi Habitation Dome terrain piece I have been slowly developing various ideas for furniture and other items to fill out the spaces inside the dome.

I had already settled on the different uses for different rooms, kitchen, workshop, lab control room etc. But the big question was how do I make this stuff, will it look suitably retro sci-fi and finally, how can I do it without spending too much time on it…

My first option was to use some ready made resin scenic pieces, such as those available in the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang range from Copplestone Castings or or the sci-fi scenics from Scotia Grendel Productions, however, neither of them really caught the retro sci-fi feel that I was looking for.

The thought of making it all from scratch was quite a daunting one, and I suppose has been the main thing that has caused the stalling of the project. However, even though I haven’t been working on it recently I have been keeping my eye open for suitable items that I could use.

Some time ago my sons had a Happy Meal from McDonalds and returned with some odd little (totally pointless) music players, in due course one of them stopped working and was about to be disposed of when it occurred to me that it might work well as a retro computer so that was added to my pile of bits.

Now having found both some 15mm sci-fi tanks and the “retro computer” from McDonalds Happy Meals, I have since been keeping an eye on the toys that my sons gather from their (very occasional) trips to fast food establishments.

Just recently McDonalds have been running a series of science related toys based on the cartoon show Johnny Test. Now most them are of no interest, but two caught my eye and had a definite pulp feel to them.

Both of these have real possibilities for biohazard chambers, growth tanks or hydroponic tanks.

As soon as I saw them I immediately did a search on Ebay (there is quite a market for McDonalds toys on Ebay). Found several listings for the ones I wanted, and bid on them. You can almost certainly pick them up for the starting price (usually 99p + postage) so I managed to get two or three of each.

I have held off posting this article until I had what I needed, but there are plenty more being listed if anyone else would like some!

McDonald’s toys always seem to come fitted with a type of safety screw that requires a triangular headed screwdriver. However, it is possible to force a 3mm flat headed screwdriver into the screw and undo them with some care. As I don’t plan on putting the screws back in, I could of course have simply drilled them out. But, as I managed with the flat headed screwdriver, I didn’t need to resort to that!

As you can see the two toys strip down fairly easily. They have four screw holding them together and no sign of any glue anywhere.

This was the bit I was most interested in disassembling. To make the chambers I am planning I really needed the inner (spiralled) part to come out leaving a plain tube. Fortunately I got my wish!

As for the spiral and inner mechanism, they go straight into the bits box, I am sure I will find a use for them at some point.

Now, to reassemble the chamber and see how it looks… Perfect! This will do nicely for my Habitation Dome hydroponics lab. I also have a couple of spares on their way that will be great for any pulp games I create in the future. I can already see a Weird War scenario with a mad Nazi doctor creating zombies or superhuman storm troopers in one of these things!

Now on to the second one. This one also came apart very easily. However the inner part, rather than being a clear tube, is actually mirrored plastic. Not so useful…

Still, I can always use it as a teleportation chamber, or possibly line it with some mirrored card and flex some clear acetate in to cover the front, making a suitable chamber!

This is as far as I have got with them at the moment, but I thought it would be worth pointing these things out to any keen pulp gamers out there. I don’t know how long they will be available on Ebay, so now is the time to track them down. Good hunting. Here is the Ebay search that should find them for you.

Toy Soldiers: SKELP Wargames Show 2011, Forfar

On Saturday I took a trip down to Forfar to visit the Angus Wargames Club’s annual wargames show, SKELP. Held in The Reid Hall (a reasonable size community hall), the show had a good atmosphere and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The traders in attendance covered most periods, and were pretty much all you could expect from a regional show so far from the centre of the UK wargaming population centres!

As for the games on show, there were an interesting mix of mainly historical games that were all run on nicely laid out tables and run with a good level of enthusiasm.

I wasn’t able to pay as much attention as I would have liked to the details of the tables, as I was accompanied by my sons( and my wife, who thoughtfully took the boys away for a nice long walk to give me a little time to catch up with a few people), however I have tried to capture some nice photos of the show, and I will comment on the ones I can recall details of!

A view of the main hall, with the games tables and traders around the edge. As you can see on the extreme right there was one empty table, a bit of disappointment for such a small show…

55 Minutes in Peking was the participation game put on by Aberdeen Wargames Club, my local club, that I really must join in the near future. The game had various Western Legations fighting off the Chinese, and basically fighting a loosing battle over the length of the day.

I would have liked to have spent more time investigating this table as it looked great fun. From what I can gather it involved a couple of parties racing across an arctic landscape to reach a crash flying saucer (whether of mundane origins or more extra-terrestrial ones I am not sure)!

This was a wonderful Chinese game that I have seen before at Carronade 2011 in Falkirk, however, at is such a nice table I had to take some more photos…

Finally we have a Great Escape game that looked to be good fun. In fact, too late in the day, my 7year old asked if we could have a go at this one, but we were planning on leave by that point and I think they had finished the games for the day.

All in all a good day, I caught up with a few people, failed miserably in the painting competition and didn’t spend much money (the wife in attendance ). We have the Aberdeen Model Railway Club Exhibition in a couple of weeks and then TARGE at Kirriemuir a couple of weeks after that, so quite a lot to look forward to at this time of year.

Posting Update!

I know things have been very quiet on the blog for the last couple of weeks.

I have not given up on the blog, it's simply that several projects are at their mid-point at the moment. I should have several new posts lined up over the next couple of weeks.  Also I am planning to attend the SKELP Wargames Show in Forfar on Saturday, so you can expect to see a show report from me later in the weekend or early next week.

In the mean time here is a work in progess photo of the Mk2 Retro Rocket. It is nearing completion and I am presently working on the landing gear.

There will be a full tutorial on the construction of the Mk2 as soon as I have it finished.

Now in the tradition of my update messages I feel I should add the usual "Space Babe" photo!