With Test of Honour Week over, I started up a project I’ve been waiting on for a while now.  In a bit of ironic coincidence, we took the weekend to go up to the Georgetown Loop and ride their old steam train.  I also just happened to pick up the Dropzone Commander Monorail scenery kit.  I usually don’t jump into a project as soon as I pick up the product but the forces seemed in alignment so I pushed forward.

I’ve been waiting to pick this piece up for a long time and settled first to grab the Orbital Laser scenery pack.  I finally got my hands on the Monorail pack and luckily, it was from Hawk’s old resin production line so I felt confident I wasn’t opening up some questionable pieces of resin that TTCombat seems to be issuing of late.

The parts are easy to assemble and after a little bit of clean up on the pylons, I was able to prime everything up in Gunmetal from Army Painter. The pieces are fantastic as they exude that early twentieth century art deco style.

I haven’t decided on a final color scheme but after running endless image searches for color images of those old art deco “streamliner” trains I think I found a scheme I liked.  The image was from a color-tinted black and white photo that was selling on eBay but I really like the gold, red, and dark metal theme.

Since I play on a more dystopian board, I made the pylons full of rust and decay.  I may still add foliage or overgrowth, especially to the metal washer bases as they seem to plain now.

There are seven of these guys so after the gunmetal primer, I ran a quick once-over with Army Painter’s Dry Rust effect, added some gold detailing at the top, then washed the whole thing in Nuln Oil.  After all the effects were down and the wash was dry, I filled in all those stupid beam holes with black.  While it was tedious and I didn’t really take the time to be too careful, the end effect works well for the piece.

After the pylons were dry, I took a moment to set up the scenery and it is just impressive.

A very unique and fun piece for the table.  I’ll figure out what to do with those plan bases and start working on the train itself.  When it is finished, I’ll put the whole thing down on a real board to get the full effect.


As a little bonus, while running in to get a snack at the Georgetown Loop’s gift shop, I came across this little gem.

While I haven’t really talked about it, in the background I’ve been gathering materials to put together a game of Dracula’s America– a weird west setting where Dracula has taken over America after assassinating President Lincoln.  The rest of the gory details will be a post of their own but I’ve been wanting to incorporate a train stop into the board design I have brewing in my head and this little toy train looked the right size.

When putting it next to a Knuckleduster western mini, I think it will work great.  I was struggling to figure out a suitable train piece as the MDF versions all look like crap next to any actual model and the real models are all collector piece prices.  You can find “Christmas Train Sets” but it is really hard to know if they will be a good scale.  Being able to see this one in person (mfr. Toysmith) was all I needed to pull the trigger.