Painting Blog 15

Time for another painting blog - and only a few short weeks since the last one!

For GameBlast25 I needed a WWII era train set - preferably a military one. Originally I was looking to buy something that I could just use without any prep but that didn't work and now, I was getting close to the date of the event!

Instead I quickly looked for alternatives and settled on getting something from Sarissa-Precision.
They sell a WWII train bundle  which was exactly what I was looking for. I also bought some additional track, foolishly thinking I might need some extra but the bundle comes with plenty of track - easily enough to hold the entire train.

I think I now have about 2.5m of track which is way more than I'll probably ever need.

The train comes a flat packed kit of card and MDF (I think?) that required a lot of assembly and some painting.
To be honest it was a bit more of a crafting project than I was hoping for - particularly with the deadline looming.

This was the first time I was doing something like this and I was on a deadline too! I found that the carriages were pretty tricky to create and I made quite a few mistakes, especially early on.

The kits are fairly elaborate and even come with features such as spinning wheels when constructed correctly. However, since I was painting so fast I found once I'd painted the wheels, they got stuck.

​Lacking the time to do a proper camo paint job, I ended up spraying them army green and finishing with a military shader all from Army Painter. There was a bit of a cleaning up afterwards.

I'm not sure how I feel about the results, I definitely could have done better - there's lots of gaps and mismatched edges, don't look too closely at the photos!
On the other hand, the flaws give it them a sort of lived-in, battered quality.
I think it looks passable and they're there to be played with, not looked at.

Sarissa also do a European style train bundle and since I can be a glutton for punishment, I may pick that up when I'm more 'cash-rich' and see if I can do a better job with a bit more experience, time and patience.

The full train