Chicago Skirmish Wargames

Here are a few pre-painted pictures today of a project that I've wanted to do for years. A 28mm Sci-Fi Train! The train is made up of an Engine from a Caterpillar brand construction toy train and the cars from a Pixar toy train.  Both were found at different resale shops some months apart.

The engine was a particularly easy build.  After removing the "Caterpillar" decals I did was add a few panels to the sides, doors to the front and back and a small standing platform in the rear.

The platform on the rear end and on all the other cars' ends are cut down wall tiles from a "Constri" (aka "Build-O-Fun") kit also found at a resale shop.  Various oddball construction kits and educational tile sets can be a great source of greebling and paneling bits.

The Box car had Sully from Monsters Inc stuck on top.  I removed it and covered the hole with plasticard.  The Side doors are each made from a pair of doors from the "Sedition Wars" Accessory pack.

The end doors are plastic word tiles.  I have also used these in other places like the roof and the sides of the engine.

The Refrigeration car also had a character stuck on top to remove; I filled the hole with a heroclix base topped with some sort of techy looking toy bit.  The Side doors and end doors are the same as on the Box car.

The Tank Car Ladders at each end are dental plaster casts from Hirst Arts molds.  A few more slightly modfied constri panels on top.

Various silver/grey bits are from Pegasus Hobbies Hexagon and Platformer terrain kits.

Though only 4 cars long, the overall length is over three and a half feet long!  This illustrates one of the difficulties with incorporating trains and wargames, as the sheer size of trains (and these cars are not as long as true-to-scale cars would be) dwarfs the playing areas of most games.

 

However, they can be quite useful for long stretches of blocking terrain and it'll look great on the 8x10 table that we use for our 28mm Mech Attack games at conventions.

I'm really looking forward to getting some paint on these but I haven't decided on the paint scheme yet. I'm also not sure whether to go with a matching paint scheme or paint each one individually.   If you've got a suggestion or a link to a cool sci-fi train paint scheme please share it below.

-Karl, CSW Member