From MarkG: 28mm Railway Tracks (50 Points)

My first, and rather mundane, terrain entry; a set of 28mm railway tracks.

These were part of my effort to create a Russian Civil War Armoured train set, though they will have much use for other WW1 and WW2 wargaming scenarios. 

2 Metres in length, composed of seven sections, each 28.5cm long and 6.5cm wide. In creating these I was very much inspired by an article that appeared in the Lardies 2014 Xmas Special by Pat Smith "Building the Deutsche Reichsbahn."

The tracks are from Sarissa Precision. I used model rail ballast to fill out the base, and then mix of cheap paints from the hardware store and stationary shop (all tones mixed from basic black, white, brown and beige bottles). Painting them was straightforward enough, but time consuming, starting from dark brown layers, through mid gray, to stone gray highlights, and rust for the tracks (a drybrush of Vallejo Cavalry Red). Ballast though is a devil to paint if you don't want to completely drown and warp the track and base.

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The tracks look awesome Mark, and having worked with ballast before I can sympathize with how much of a pain it is to paint!  Mainly because for model trains it is not usually painted, or even glued down a lot of the time, but rather just laid in, which obviously does not work for our uses.  

As for painting time, it sounds like you spent a ton of time on them, but I have to judge based on an average paint job, not the great job you did.  I am going to award 7 points per strip because I think if I was to soak these in glue first to make painting easier, each strip should take a bit more than painting a figure.  Not sure how you did them, but I would paint the ballast area quick and dirty and messy, then paint the ties and tracks after neatly.  Therefore 7 strips  would come out to 49 points but I am going to round it to 50 points.  Great work.

- Byron 

From SylvainR - 6mm Infrastructures (120 points)

I was first introduced to wargaming in 6mm scale and it has been love at first sight. I love the feeling of playing a massive army at this scale.

But before you can play a decent game, you need scenery.  I mentioned in previous posts that I bought lots of 6mm stuff from a friend a few years ago, stuff that he amassed over many years, resulting in a very eclectic collection.  In the first part of this post, I will present some "real estate". According to the rules, I would say that if everything was piled up, all the buildings and enclosures would probably fit in two 6x6x6"cubes, for a total of 40 points.

First, a metal building from CinC and an obelisk. CinC buildings are so fragile. I mounted this one on a cardboard base to reinforce its structural integrity.

Next, we have a group of ruined buildings from LEVA. I remember fondly Alain Lévesque, the founder of LEVA, who started his business in Montréal back in the 1980s. In those days without 3D printers,  we would bring him models to "copy". We would make a mold and do resin copies for us and help us save money. I still have some of these bootleg copies. Anyway, I find his the LEVA line of buildings very elegant. Here is a link to a village with LEVA products I painted 12 years ago.

This big tractor factory, another item from LEVA's line of destroyed buildings, will provide a nice centerpiece for urban battles.

Here we have a stone bridge and a pontoon bridge. Both are from CinC. These land features will be used for river crossing scenarios, once I have enough units for two armies.

In the lot, I found some walls and fences from GHQ. Instead of letting them stand free, I opted to glue them on cardboard and create small enclosures, so they could be used either a pasture, a yard for a mansion, a parking lot, a court, etc.

Here is an example of how these enclosures can be used with a building in the middle.

In the second part of this post, I will show you models for which the labels "train" and "railway" were created for the first time ever in the history of the Challenge. For the rails, I would say that they fill about one cube if piled up, for 20 points. It's hard to tell, because the rails are all flat. For the cars and engine, I think the easiest is to count them as separate vehicles, so 30x 6mm vehicles at 2 points each for a total of 60 points. Note that the rails come from 3 different manufacturers and I had to mount them on an elevated base to create some sort of homogeneity. Still, if you look closely, you can distinguish three different gauges in the box.

These six freight cars are from LEVA. It was too difficult to glue the cars on the rails, so I created additional rail elevations to put them on. It also gave me additional lengths of railroad.

Fuel cars and flat cars from LEVA. Note the special flat car for super heavy tanks. The Brumbars and the Jadgpanther are just used for embellishment and were painted by a friend of mine, AndréD, many years ago.

These four cars are from Irregular Miniatures and provide a nice little convoy to be used with the green locomotive (see below).

Eight cars from Heroics&Ros to create an armoured train. The design is clearly German, but I decided not to put any markings, so I could use this set as Polish or Soviet armoured trains as well.

And, finally, the engines, the queens of the rail. The leftmost one is from LEVA. I could not tell you which real engine is is based on. But when I surfed the net to find color schemes, I found that in Germany wheels were painted red instead of black to facilitate spotting cracks in the wheels. The green locomotive is from Irregular Miniatures, and if you feel an urge to say "Thomas the Engine", well, you are wrong. Thomas is blue. His friend James is the green one :-). And then we  have an armoured locomotive for the armoured train, from Heroics&Ros. I counted each engine as two vehicles because of the tenders.

The final picture show three train convoys side by side. I'm sure the addition of railways and trains will create interesting focal points for future WW2 battles in Europe.

To summarize, it is suggested that the buildings are worth 40 points, the rails 20 points and the train cars 60 points for a total of 120 points.

As always, thanks for reading!

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Very nice work Sylvain. I have a bit of experience with LEVA products, and you are correct, they really are excellent for 6mm. And well done cranking out all of the railways - rail lines make for excellent terrain bits, particularly in smaller scale gaming where a rail line can play an important role in battlefield planning - and the embankments are great for defending!

GregB