Avrupan Sci-fi/Future Wars Scenery

October was Avrupan month and I decided to concentrate on painting figures and models and making scenery, rather than try a game, though it has to be said I am still trying to find a set of rules that meets my tastes. Anyway, I have now finished all the figures I have for this project, have only a few models to go, and produced a lot of buildings and scenery.

Here are photographs of the latter, made from all sorts of domestic plastic/metal food containers, with various odds and ends added from the scrap box. Grey, or at least various shades thereof, is my default colour for Avrupan scenery. The bases are usually card or thin wood or plastic, finished off with fine sand/gravel, it being an arid/desert world. All, by the way, are for 25mm figures.

I confess I rather balk at the price of ready made sci-fi scenery, hence the homemade route, but they do for me. I probably could do with more signs, symbols, labels, numbers, etc., but as most of those available commercially are in English, they do not fit my ideas for Avrupan, where that is not a language.

A standard habitat on the left; a blown up one on the right. I am coming round to the fact that you can never have enough destroyed structures in modern or future warfare! The original piece for the buildings was an air freshener.

Some sort of factory/admin building on the left - mainly bottle lids - 

and storage tanks on the right - three tonic cans.

Rocky outcrops for scattering about the tabletop.

These are made from those foam packing things that look like "Wotsits".

A storage area and various items of equipment made out of the scrap box. The pipes are paintbrush protectors, there is a cotton real, some tyres and a container spare from models, while the boxes came from some sort of equivalent to "Lego" that I have had lying around for decades. The walls are plastic figures bases surplus to requirements.

Two more factory-style buildings - the main structures were dessert tubs.

More factory buildings - dessert tubs again, with various bottle lids, although the round top on the one to the right is the head off an old roller deodorant.

Another blown up building - a few odds and ends inside.

A defensive point on the left, something industrial on the right.

Power towers perhaps? These were supports left over as surplus when we had 

a new shower tray some years ago.

Another factory/admin building - the main part is half of an index card box.

Some heavy duty pipework for an industrial area. These came from an old children's toy found in a charity shop which involved putting them together to make a wind instrument!

A general picture of some of the end products. I really do have to have a game now!

Sun King Painted Figures

I am a bit behind schedule with my wargames photographs, I realised, with all my visits to museums and heritage railway lines. September was a Sun King month and I did manage some painting as well as several games (Wimpfen and Tanaro - see earlier posts).

I completed a field gun and crew; these units are used by either side in a game, artillery in the 1670s not really having an official uniform, as far as I can tell from the sources I have read and seen.

I also completed for my French army the Condé cavalry regiment, two squadrons, as was the case for most line cavalry units at this time. The prince de Condé's colour was a type of buff, so I used this for sashes, plumes and shoulder ribbons. The flag is the closest I could find, from Maverick Models, though I think it is more accurate for early 1700s. Figures are from North Star 1672.

North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

Another visit last month to Yorkshire to see daughter, son-in-law and grandson saw us going to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. If you get the chance, it is one of the best heritage lines in the United Kingdom, which winds its way through the moors for almost 20 miles and has lots of locomotives and rolling stock, with its main station at Pickering, a nice town on the southern edge of the moors.

We had a bit of a treat as the Flying Scotsman was visiting the line for a fortnight and we got to see it at Pickering station. I had seen it many, many years ago, but not running. It was something of a special moment, for the locomotive is rather a national treasure, although there are many other fine steam locomotives about. The people waiting to see it all fell quiet, something of a reverent hush descended, as it came into sight and steamed smoothly into the platform. A special moment.

Anyway, some photographs and captions.

A Black Five sitting in the platform, waiting its path to head north. A workhorse of an engine.

Now this was an extra surprise. This is a replica of Locomotion, the first locomotive to pull regular passenger traffic on the railways in 1825. It is normally at the Beamish Museum, I think, but had come down to Pickering as part of the 200 Anniversary of the railways in the UK.

Imagine travelling in one of those! Open to the elements, hard seats, no facilities! As a former railwayman, I can hear the customer complaints!

The view north - country end as we would have called it in my time - from the station's bridge.

The people gathering to see the Flying Scotsman.

The Flying Scotsman.

In British Railways dark green colour.

A rake of burgundy red coaches behind.

Running round to what will be the front of the train for the return journey back up the line. There is no turntable on the railway, so this means the locomotives run backwards for one direction, forwards for the other.

A lovely moment, seeing this locomotive and the others. And I bet I get way more hits for this post than my usual wargaming stuff!