Railway Misadventures

I’d also been waiting for a driver who goes around twirling his moustache while dreaming up ways to steal from the Widow’s and Orphans fund just before Christmas, and with the arrival of “Charles Vane” on the island I had a perfect candidate.

Most participants in “The Races” on Ascension started out with whatever vehicles they could find; It takes a considerable fortune, like that of the Limpton Sisters, to transport a car several thousand kilometres over the Atlantic. This is why the other independent teams are driving a clapped out Rolls-Royce and some battered trucks. Thus, it says a lot about Charles Vane that he imported a Bugatti type 35 racing car; an older vehicle by 1937, to be sure, but still not cheap.

Of course, this being “The Races”, the car needed to have some kind of offensive weaponry, and so this classic of the European race scene is now equipped with a forward facing machine gun, operated by what appears to be either an air hose and plunger or a piece of string.

On the back is a pair of grenade launching tubes: apparently Vane doesn’t trust the rockets he sold to the Limpton sisters so he’s going for a “safer” alternative. These will of course be wildly inaccurate in a race; there aren’t any rules in the official rule book, so I’m going to have to work out how to simulate them bouncing off in all directions before exploding…

*Not a typo, just another bad pun…

One minor problems I’ve discovered with tabletop games, is that they tend to be made for more than one player. You will see the issue here at once. The obvious solution of going about and being sociable was dismissed out of hand because that means, well, going out and being sociable.

Left to my own devices, I decided to work on a “solo” adaptation for the slightly bonkers Maximilian racing game I’ve been playing for a while now. I decided to base this in the solo version of Pulp Alley, mostly because I’d used the system and it seemed to work. It is based on a set of “chance” cards that can add a bit more unpredictability and chaos to the game; given that the last time I had a “race” one competitor managed to blow up their car with their own rockets, the need for extra chaos is possibly questionable, but still…

As with the Pulp Alley card deck, I decided these needed to have a good mix of positive and negative outcomes, so a competitor is as likely to get a card allowing them to accelerate faster than usual, or “fix” the damage to a car during a race, as they are to find their guns have jammed or their brakes don’t work. There are also several “wild card” versions which won’t automatically affect the competitor on the current turn but which are specifically targeted at the lead car or other vehicles in the race.

I will try these out at some point when I have time. I’m also wondering if a railway based version of this would be possible, to introduce things like sheep on the line or even represent traffic. I will return to this subject.

Of course, having read this post back, I realise that if this is what my brain does when left to its own devices, it’s possibly a good argument why I should be more sociable…

I have to admit, I’ve been putting this off for a while, as it is the first model “based on” a building that exists in real life on Ascenstion Island, where it houses the Government headquarters and presumably some administrative offices and reception rooms for serving little chocolate based sweets*.

The original building is a bit bigger; there are five archways instead of three, but if I’d aimed for accuracy it would have dwarfed everything else on the table, so some compromise was necessary. Even with this, the first version looked collosal when I added a makeshift roof to get a feel for the overall impression. Typically I then went too far the other way and made the next mockup too small. This one seems to be in the “goldilocks zone”, but to be honest I’m fed up of remaking the same building over and over agian, so this is the size it’ll be.

I’m also aware I’m going to need an interior for the building. I don’t seem to like making interiors, judging by the number of empty shells I’ve made so far, but being a government office in a corrupt boom town on with one of the few open ports in an intercontinental trade war, there has to be somewhere for all the diplomacy, spying, general espionage and corruption to take place.

Just don’t expect it too soon…

*Very old, very British cultural reference…

The formerly abandoned Whisky distillery is now under new management. Charles Vane turned up a couple of years ago and has developed a legendary reputation for business failures, and paradoxically, for always having lots of ready cash. He is known to be part of the “consortium” of local businessmen behind the casino, bank and harbour, but even that doesn’t account for the amount of cash he seems to have available.

Now Vane has taken over the old whisky distillery, although the legality of this is as spurious as the claims on the signs. His “security services” seem to consist of hiring out a group of two-bit thugs to local businesses for their “protection”, and for dealing with those uppity working class types who try to organise for better pay and conditions. “Transport” probably means smuggling: on Ascension, a transport company that isn’t smuggling would be a rarity.

There’s no sign of the “fine liquors”, but since Vane took over and the extension was completed, lots of pipework has been delivered, so this may be on the way. How close to “fine liquors” the final product will be is another matter. On Vane’s record, it will be a very expensive engine cleaner.

All together, I think this sign is the only one to take seriously, very seriously indeed…

I’m sure it is no surprise to anyone that the “storage tank” no purports to contain some kind of volatile and highly flammable liquid. It’s equally unsurprising that the tank has apparently not undergone any maintenance whatsoever for quite some time…

At this point, most model makers say things like “I used the usual methods for painting”. In my case, of course, the “Usual Methods” are trial and error; hope; then inevitably doing it all over again, and again, until I’m vaguely satisfied. Fortunately, no pictures exist of this stage in proceedings.

Normally I paint things a basic colour and then dry brush them to death, but because I didn’t want to emphasise the corrugations in the tin any more than necessary, I ended up painting the rust and then stippling over the top to create a new texture. “Stippling” is a fancy word for getting my oldest brush, putting a bit of paint on it, and then prodding the model with it repeatedly until I think the surface looks moderately believable.

Of course, this makes the model look battered but absolutely destroys the brush. I also discovered that if you aren’t careful, you can easily overdo the effect, but I think I got away with it.

I’ve been watching too many online videos again, specifically videos where people make all kinds of interesting things out of rubbish. Also, despite attempts at organisation, the “bits” box is still overflowing.

So, when the time came to add the “storage tank” for this rather dodgy warehouse, I decided to go for a food can.

The plan was to try and break up the lines of the can without covering it completely, to see if I could make it look the part, although as usual “look the part” is a fairly broad criteria based on pictures and guesswork and a complete lack of any knowledge of such things.

Thus, I spent a happy hour sticking bits of printer packaging and leftovers from previous projects to the can, each other, my fingers, and on one occasion when I was distracted by something shiny, the workbench.

I even found an online calculator to work out how to cut an octagon to the right shape for the rather precarious “walkway” on the top of the can, which remarkably worked. So there: that’s maths that is, and never mind that I just put the numbers into the computer and let it do all the hard work. To give the walkway some texture, I added plastic parcel strapping: something else I seem to have collected in bulk over the last few months.

Now I have something that looks vaguely as I want, I’ll take this off to paint, in the hope I can make it look less like a giant lentil container, and more like a tank of dangerous and possibly highly volatile chemicals…

If you’ve been taking notes on this blog (and if not, why not?) you may remember while building Ascension Harbour that I had an idea for a “Dingy Cafe”, and:

“Of course such a building will naturally require a back entrance down on street level, and an equally dingy taxi to drive up carrying the main character…“

Honestly, I really should keep quiet about these ideas…

Given that Ascension Island is all of 14km/8.5 miles long, a Taxi company may seem rather unnecessary, but the Aerodrome is a good 5 kilometres/3 miles from the town and hotels of Georgetown, and we can hardly expect the rich and the famous travellers to take a bus. Every day, a procession of taxis can be seen waiting in front of the hotels in the town, all jockeying for the best spots. This being Ascension, many of the drivers will resort to fisticuffs or sabotage to gain the edge over their rivals.

I found this Matchbox “Models of Yesteryear” 1917 Unix Taxi on a certain online shopping site. Unix Taxis, despite being French, were apparently fairly popular amongst London Taxi companies and I decided it was quite feasible that an older model would be sold off cheaply after 20 years or so driving around London, to end its days on Ascension.

Of course, it’s less likely that it would be yellow; Yellow Cabs were used in the USA from at least 1908, but they didn’t become common elsewhere until sometime later. On the other hand, I was a bit fed up with painting all my vehicles similar colours, and I wanted to see how it would look. Besides, this is an alternate history, so I get to make the rules; maybe an enterprising independent driver realised that American tourists would be inclined to use a taxi in a colour they recognised from home.

Besides, having been weathered in the usual way, there’s not much yellow left visible on the taxi anyway…

I’m making life complicated. Again.

It seemed so simple in my head: the building should look like it had been abandoned by a previous unsuccessful business, then was taken over by the current “owner” who had expanded and altered it to suit. This meant that the “original” tiled roof would still be over the “old” part of the building, while the “new part of the building would be roofed in the same cheap corrugated metal as the walls.

Unfortunately, this meant I had to make all those tiles. Frankly, by the time I was finished, I was entirely in sympathy with the “Use corrugated metal” school of architecture.

The builders of the new section were clearly very much of the “Stamp on it until it fits, then smack nails into it until it doesn’t come off again” persuasion: subtlety and aesthetics clearly aren’t part of the equation. Apparently neither is waterproofing, judging by the multiple “repairs” that have since been added. I’ll paint them soon, honest.

The extension also has a replacement delivery door, presumably the better to access whatever will be inside, but I suspect also so that deliveries can come and go without being quite as obvious to anyone watching the building…

When I left you last time, it was with a certain apprehension whether the corners on this warehouse would work.

Well, it turns out that they did, mostly: don’t look too closely at the mortar lines in the picture above -I said don’t… stop zooming in… okay, fine, they’re a bit out at the top: I guess that’s where the down spout will be going.

I’m pretty pleased about this result because this was also a test for future projects: apart from making buildings for the model railway, I’ve got a vague idea for a scenario in the same world as Ascension, but based in south Germany, and both of those will mean a lot of stone built houses with mortar lines…

Of course, this assumes I can now successfully blend in the corners with the colours for the rest of the building, but I think that should work.

If not, there’s always weathering; weathering solves everything…

It appears I’ve gone and cornered myself, as it were, with corners.

It’s one thing to make nice flat walls and cover them with clay, but as can be seen above, this leaves a thumping big gap on the corners. This can be avoided by making the model as a box, something I’ve done before; in fact the first clay/ card model I built for my model railway worked exactly like this (And I’m working to get back to more model railway based material for this blog, honestly) but on this model I wanted an interior for my little lead figures to play in, which meant interior walls, which I thought would be easier if I just make the walls as a unit, and… never mind. I was here now, and I had to deal with this big gap in the walls.

My “plan” to deal with this, “plan” being a nice description of a vague idea mixed with hope, was to build the walls as the aforementioned units with interior and exterior walls, windows et c, assemble the lot, then fill the outside corners with more clay, and score them to make the brickwork match. Assuming it did, of course…

Now I’ve got all the windows and doors printed out, the inside walls are cut, and I’ve run out of excuses to find out if all this is wishful thinking, or if I can make it work…