BUCKBOARDS AND A WAGON

Hi all, back again after a bit of an unforeseen break (sorry bout that), continuing on with the wild west theme, I have put together a wagon, buck board and a doctors buggy, scale wise these are 15/18mm and are all from Blue Moon Manufacturing, all of these will be just obstacles and cover for the many warring cowboy factions that will inhabit my terrain, enjoy...

 

The buckboard was a basic four wheeled wagon of simple construction, usually drawn by a horse, a very iconic form of transport in the wild west, it received its name via the front most board which protects the driver from the horse's hooves if it was to 'buck'.

 



 The doctors buggy, again simple in construction, a smaller four wheeled wagon, usually drawn by one horse, but with much more comfortable additions, colored wheels and a comfy seating position, not a bad way to travel in the wild west.

 



The Wagon, A heavy four wheeled vehicle usually used to transport goods and in some cases even people, is the ultimate iconic ride in the wild west.

CASTING STONES

 

A while back I purchased a Woodland Scenics Rock Mould, at a first glance the mould looked nicely detailed and made of sturdy material, when I got the mould home I had a closer look and noticed that some of the moulds were quite deep, I wondered how hard it would be to get the castings out once they had set, anyway for $12.95 I thought it was a good buy, eventually I tracked down some casting plaster, found some free time and thought I would cast some meduim sized boulders for my terrain field.

So last weekend I took the time and cast some boulders, they seem to set fairly quickly but for safety's sake I left them over night as per the instructions, the next day, like a child unwrapping their christmas gift, I made my way to the garage and proceeded to pop the boulders out of the mould, the first thing I realised was just how brittle they turned out, bits breaking here and there, in the photo below you can see a boulder that broke after I had finished with it, the second thing I noticed was the deep moulded boulders took some convincing to come out and some of them came out in peices (just as I thought) overall the boulders turned out real nice, plenty of detail, with a realistic look, they are fragile but I think once you glue them down to the terrain, they should be fine.   

MORE STREET FILLERS

So I am still plugging away at my terrain details, after searching for a while, I finally found a chain link fence in 'O' scale that I thought was constructed well, this is from Insta fence, it didn't come with the razor wire out of the box, but that was something I added on as an after thought, this fencing will be used to fence off the back of the local bank, I think it turned out real sweet.

The other two items I acquired were a packet of witches hats (traffic cones) which I primed and sprayed 'Fluorescent Red', nothing too difficult there, and a pair of road barriers, both from the MTH range (not cheap), break them straight out of the pack and plonk them on your terrain, the barriers are real nice and authentic looking, I guess I had to have them...

STREET FILLERS

So, I have been going hard on the Terrain side of my project, showcasing this week a variety of street fillers, from left to right I got my hands on three ladders, they are made of plastic and will serve the Survivors well, giving them access to rooftops and other out of reach areas, I will even allow the players to carry the ladders around if they wish for use in different circumstances, all this will be at a cost of course, Hehehe.

The second Item on display are street signs, you can't have a street scene without street signs right? I have a pair of each sign placed strategically around the terrain, I purposely damaged the signs to give them more of a used look, they seem more authentic this way, at least I think they do ... added a bit of grim to them aswell, I think there pretty cool.

The last item is a street light, I have four of these placed in pairs around my terrain for added realism, the height is right, I just wished they would have been a little thicker in the base of the shaft but ah well cant have everything hey? I had to put the street lights on a plastic styrene base so I could blue tac them down, this helps keep them straight and upright.
The ladders I purchased off some random dude on Evilbay, the signs I made, street lights, again purchased of Evilbay (search - O scale street lights), all these items are great and add so much to the overall feel of my terrain.

BUDWEISER TRAILER

My latetest addition to filling up Small Town USA is a Big Truck Trailer with a 'Budweiser' theme, it has opening sides (both) and an opening rear, all for serving the lovely Budweiser brew, The trailer measurers 28.5cm long x 5cm wide x 5.8 cm high, its made of a very hard ABS plastic, beautifully decorated with 'Budweiser' decals and scale wise its just about perfect, I would have preferred it if it was wider, but I can live with it.  

My terrain layout has two roads running down the middle of it with a meduim strip between them, it was too much space with not a lot in it, so, the idea of a truck trailer was birthed, when I placed the trailer down on the terrain it just seemed to fit right in, its nice looking, its the right scale and it filled the gap, I happy with the way it turned out, it will give players something else to run around or climb in the effort to get away from ever increasing zombie hordes. 

JERSEY BARRIERS TAKE 2

At some stage during this project I decided that the earlier Jersey Barriers that I did just didn't cut the grade, so I got rid of them and bought some proper ones, these barriers were modelled from actual blueprints, they are better detailed, straight and they actually look like the real thing, in the picture above I have added to them some metal fencing for effect, in addition I printed out some warning signs for any would be passer by's.

I also painted up a couple with 'danger' colours black and yellow, the rest of them I left looking the std 'grey' colour, all in all I have about ten of them, I am happy with the way they turned out, hope you like them.

VENDING MACHINES

I managed to pick up some Vending machines this week, these should make for some good terrain clutter, they will help to make the terrain homely and give it that lived in feeling, I think there is nothing worse than playing on empty unrealistic looking terrain, they should also serve well as something you can push over in front of a door to lock out the invading zombie hordes. 

These vending machines are from K-line, they are actually illuminated vending machines, but I dont think I will go that far(hooking them up to electricity), there is no assembly required they pretty much come straight out of the packet and straight onto your terrain, gotta love that.

BILLBOARD

I managed to find this advertising billboard on Ebay the other week, I thought it would make a great addition to Small Town USA, I even found an applicable billboard poster to go on it !(poster was found on the internet), now I believe that it actually lights up aswell if I electronically hook it up, not bad, this will be usefuI for overall atmoshpere, construction wise the billboard is made of wood with the base made of metal sprayed black, the actual lights are of an aluminum type material with real miniature globes fitted. I must say that If I ever get to the finishing stages of this terrain between the billboard, the street lights and park lanterns I should easily be able to achieve a eerie dusk effect if I turn the room lights right down, now that would be pretty cool I think.

COCA - COLA, "ITS THE REAL THING"

Hi all, this week I managed to pick up some cool Coca - Cola accessories off ebay along with a ride on forklift, this stuff looks great and will add lots of character to the back warehouse of one of my convenience stores, that I will set up in Small Town USA, I picked up 10 crates full of Coca - Cola bottles, and ten empty Coca - Cola crates, the forklift came with a single pallet and seven crates full of the precious black liquid, I have also ordered another 10 actual wooden pallets to use as props, the pallets should turn up real soon. This stuff looks great and is in scale, extremely happy with this purchase.

 

MORE STREET ACCESSORIES

Hi all, so what have I been up to this week ? well I have been working on a few different things, a group of gang banger survivors, stage 2 of Small Town USA, the County sheriff and his vehicle and some more street accessories, so, first items finished are the street accessories, three Bin skips, two small ones and a large one, these I plan to fill up with junk, just another place for the survivors to hide in and around, then I finished off a couple of park benches which should work well with the stage two parkland, and finally I have some LPG gas bottles, these items I'm sure will be in high demand, because when you shoot these little suckers they go BANG! more items real soon.

STREET ACCESSORIES

It wasn't that long ago that I looked at the streets of Small Town USA and thought that they looked bare and empty, what would the survivors of this Zombie outbreak going to hide behind ? how would they move from point A to point B without being seen ? so I stepped out my front door, onto the street and had a bit of a look around, I tried to imagine what I would use as cover, from here I went back home and jumped online and began ordering my street accessories, one week later they turned up at my work place.

Scenemaster are the makers of these fine street accessories, I bought a couple of packs, 'just in case', they are nicely detailed and handpainted (nice paint job), you get a pair of mail boxes, telephone boxes, dust bins and four fire hydrants, I purchased them in O scale to suit my 28mm miniatures, as you can see, scale wise they match up quite well, very happy with the purchase.

JERSEY BARRIERS

I managed to get some resin Jersey barriers from the Armourcast web page, I think these will add a nice touch to my Zombie terrain which will end up being what I call 'Small Town USA' as the title suggests a small town in the USA (more on small town USA later), the resin barriers turned out ok but not all the lines were straight ( you maybe able to tell in the photos), overall I'm happy with them, I added some black and yellow strips via water decals just to add that extra something.