Model Railroading

After more than 25 years of collecting and arm-chair model railroading I have decided to jump back into the hobby. I first started to have interest in the hobby as a kid growing up in the late seventies. Sometime around my 10th birthday I got an HO scale train set. I was thrilled, I had been dreaming of this set for a long time, wearing out the Sears catalogue in the process. My first layout began soon after. My dad built a 4’x 8’ table with folding legs to use as the train table. I have no idea what I was going but I had a blast. This lasted for a couple of years but my interest soon died out.

Fast-forward to the early nineties and I am married with a young daughter. My interest slowly rekindled and I started reading the Model Railroader magazines again. My house didn’t really have the space for a proper layout (at least that is what I thought at the time) so I decided on a switching layout. Switching is my favorite railroad activity so it was a good fit. I modified the track plan, from one of the Atlas track planning books, for the Southside Connecting railroad. I built the bench and got the track down and even had trains running! My wife was amazed (her actual words were “you’re actually doing it?”).

Life took a turn and we moved out of state and my uncompleted railroad was abandoned, much like a real one. I continued to collect cars and locos for a few more years but things just never seemed to be right to start another layout (excuses, excuses). I now realize that if this ever going to happen I have to just do it and make the most of what I have.

“Why is this on your painting blog?” you ask. I plan to use this blog to document my progress just as I have done with my war gamming hobby. There is a lot of painting on a model railroad you know, so there will be plenty of things to share. Don’t worry; I have not given up on my war gamming and miniatures painting. In fact, we are starting a Lord of the Rings campaign next month so keep a look out for that. More on this later.

Warhammer Ancient Battles Tournament

My local game group, The North Phoenix Irregulars, is holding our annual WAB tournament on June 9th. Checkout the website for more info - http://wab.bluedream.com/. Please check out the list of sponsors for the event

Great New Online Magazine

This is a really terrific new online magazine - Wargames Painting and Modeling. I just download issue 1 and read through it. There are some of my favorite painters writing about how they do such amazing work. I can't wait for the next issue!

Send out your Warg Riders!

I have finally finished up the first 6 Warg Riders for Lord of the Rings. The are cool plastic models that go together very easily, and like most of the LoTR figures, they are a breeze to paint. Here are a few individual pictures.

Some don't like the body seam on the neck of the Warg. I don't have a major problem with it, the picture above is probably the most noticable of the bunch.

Painting Tutorials

Wow! This is really cool! This blog has a great tutorial on painting in Black and White. I would have never thought of this!

http://carmensminiaturepainting.blogspot.com/

There is a cool tutorial on caveman painting too.

Iron Warriors

This is a unit of Iron Warriors that I painted for my friend Tom. Tom has been unnecessarily patient. I think I took on this painting commission more that 2 years ago. Granted, I have some really good reason for not getting around to finishing these, but still, I should be done by now.


These guys turned out better than I expected but they are still not very good. I have a very bad primer coat and I should have stripped them and tried again. At least I should have bought new ones and done them right. Tom likes them, but he is very nice and would never tell me they suck ;-)

Only 20 or so more to do!

Daemonhunters Part 1

I realized this evening that I had failded to document a couple of figures that I have resently painted. I had entertained thought of playing in the Arizona Champions of Chaos tournament that was held in every hobby store in the state. In order to play the list I have created I needed to finish a couple of figures.

First up is the third Daemonhost for this army. GW only makes two different Daemonhosts but you are allowed three in the army. This means that you must get creative for the third one.

Can you hard-core GW gamers out there recognize this? This is not actually a figure but is instead a vehicle bit.

Because this is a bit and not a figure the back was never meant to be seen, so I had to add some more bits to finish it off.

Next up is the Sage. This is and old WHFB Empire figure that I have kept for just this purpose. Trouble is, I have never used the Sage so I never got around to painting it.

I had to put in a little detail on the drawing pad...it just looked strange blank!

The painting on these two firgure is really not up to my current standards and that was intentional. You see, my Daemonhunters army is a couple of years old and the painting style of that army is not the style I am doing today. This meant that I needed to copy my own, older style. This is not an easy thing to do. Here are some comparison shots so you can judge for yourself how well I did.

I think I matched the style of the Daemonhosts pretty well.

The Sage is OK. It is hard to tell from this picture but I think he is to pale. He will work, I just need to keep him in the back.

I will ad more pictures of this army soon.