County Durham ambulances

Transport for this one has proved easy - thanks Lledo. Managed to pick up two Lledo ambulances circa 1950 - should fit right in.

No idea when all UK fully integrated with standard white ambulances but the blue is certainly the right colour for the hospital vans used in the 60s.

 

Always worth going back to my original Newhaven brief - set in a place which doesn't exist, mix of US and UK, in a time period that could cover anything from late Victorian to 1950s - mostly been looking at 20s/30s in the past but nominally moving up to 50s/60s is fine.

Might even be silly and see about getting a model Morris Minor or Austin Cambridge - the Morris Minor was our first car, I can even remember the registration number (JNL121).

1897 Sorting buildings

It's one thing collecting and painting loads of shiny 42mm toys, but that's only part of it. Battles and generally playing with the things means you need buildings, hedges and trees on the table as well.

Happily, I've got Newhaven. OK, Newhaven is 28mm rather than 42mm, but then lots of people have buildings that are to a smaller scale than the figures, plus one house = one village... Not relevant! This is basically a 1:1 toys scenario! The question is: what do they look like next to each other.

So I've had a couple of quick sessions trying things out.

This is my Lledo brewery. Very much something to be defended from those Foreign types.

Likewise, Sarissa country manor (normally used as part of Miskatonic University) fits well. The Sarissa fencing also fits in very nicely scale-wise.

Different photo session, Sarissa church - these larger buildings all go very well with the figures.

However... 1897 is very  much a British affair - most of Newhaven is obviously American. Don't think the TTCombat  police station is appropriate somehow.

So, conclusion - 28mm buildings go very well with 42mm buildings. However, it does mean having to buy and build a load of British houses if I'm going to represent the sort of High Street I grew up in (and which would have been easily recognised in 1897.)

Brewery and Park completed

The A3 board system seems to be working but does need a few compromises. The brewery, for instance, was originally meant to be linear. All pieces on the brewery apart from the lorry are glued down; the park I've glued the fence but items like the clock and chairs are loose - I can forsee lots of variation in the future.

I've been buying various road and pavement sets for the table. However, many of these simply have the features'drawn' on in a dark sepia colour. So I bought a dark sepia marker and drew 1cm squares on the courtyard to represent 2' flags.

At the back, the paving is marked to represent cobbles.

That seemed to work, so when it came to the park I rather overdid it really... for this, I should probably have glued the grass in first, but I thought... 

So, cobbles for the front and back entrances, crazy paving inside. It looks quite effective.

The side view really does show off the park to it's best advantage.

 And finally a back view.

Lledo brewery

When I was busy collecting all those Lledo cars I also picked this item up. I often see them advertised on ebay for around £50, so getting this one for a tenner seemed a good buy.

It does fit in quite well with the Sarissa buildings and will later be part of the industrial estate across the river - it's current position next to the church is temporary and purely for photographic purposes.

On the other hand, I should have checked out where I put everything else - it's not really on the roof...

Pulp Fiction - work in progress

This project could take a while to finish, so updates in order.

At the moment I'm just looking at a rough layout - this one being some kind of possibly Americanish seaport. The final product will be a mish mash of US/European architecture dating anywhere between 1920 and 1950.

There will be far more Sarissa buildings. Most of them will not be painted - I like the Lovecraftian sepia look as it is. I've got a church and graveyard still to build.

 

 On the other hand, this style of building is liable to go. Again, Sarissa do 'standard' houses, so with limited staining of roof tiles these will probably take over.

A view of the Port area. The sea will not finish as big as this - the land board was an off cut I painted up but it's too narrow for the town. Lledo vehicles on the land, one card and one Reviresco-based balsa ship in the background together with a couple of balsa planes. The Lighthouse was picked up at some seaside resort - I forget where.

The freighter at the back is an 'old' one, meanwhile the patrol boat at the front is the basic structure of a new class of gunboat/AS boat/torpedo boat. Basically,  there will be a gun at front of all of them, then either a gun, depth charges or torpedo tubes at the back. Just in case there's somthing lurking on the offshore reef... The blocks forming the current breakwaters are thanks to pinching an idea from Bob Cordery at Wargames Miscellany

Quite a few figures I'm working on, and none quite finished. They're a mix of RAFM,  Reviresco and Old Glory UK. Most of these batches are Old Glory, bought at Partizan recently and are from BMM404 Streets of Chicago set. I'll probably be getting more of these figures - like them.

These four are probably my favourites to date. Painting skills aren't what they were, especially regarding faces, and none are actually finished yet. The three on the right are Old Glory, Mr Brown Suit is a RAFM Student Investigator.

Lledo vehicles are perfect for the job. A lot of them sell individually for around £6-8 including postage: still cheaper than buying wargames kits, but far more than I like to pay - by buying collections I try to pay about £1 a model including postage! Still need the odd one at a higher price, but can still keep the price down - it's a matter of overbuying but paying less!