Bath day in Alkali Wells

There are tales of an annual bath day in certain parts of the Old West.  Now, whether that is true or not - and, mostly, I suspect not - the first ever bath day has come for Alkali Wells.  Every man, woman, and child in and around Alkali Wells took a bath today - excepting some of the Apache who are not always friendly to European ways it seems.  Not saying they don't like to be clean, just that they did not attend today's event.

The specific meaning here being that all 252 living souls in the shape of miniatures to populate Alkali Wells and environs got washed today in preparation for getting further prepped through filing and knife work to be glued to their bases prior to being primed.  Heck, even the 'necros' got washed meaning the 42 dead figures to attend the 21 groups of 12 got into the clean up action.

And keeping the momentum going, I also washed 10 buckboards, 6 buggies, and four grain wagons - with horses and drivers - to be ready for the next steps ahead of basing for priming.  That will add 20 more wheeled vehicles and bring me to the half-way point of having 100 wheeled conveyances for the Old West, at least 100 pulled by livestock - not counting wheelbarrows of which there are a few in the collection.

Of course, all those figures will need their bases so I did preliminary prep for them to:

That's all the bases for the groups of people and the buggies, buckboards, and wagons cleaned today - and a few extra for some unrevealed items as of yet.  I figured a shot of them unprimed would be easier to see - I prime one side and then glue the figures to the other side when ready and, once the glue has dried, prime the figures and the other side of the base at the same time.  It does take some extra work and paint but I really don't like the look of bare metal bases showing on my gaming tables when someone chooses to knock over a stand to indicate it's been shot (though no real need for that because I have at least two casualty figures per group).

Oh, and I did get some work done on the kit-bashing railroad cars - did some work on the six cattle cars, the one horse car, and a tiny bit on the three tank cars which was just shortening the core for the tanks.  And all the manufactured pieces, resin and metal, also got washed today.  But progress is progress so a good day.  Until it got too hot to work out in the garage!

One thing I didn't prepare were dead horses or bases for dead horses but I will be using them as markers, along with the destroyed wagons, to mark damage to wagons and their teams.  Hmm, I don't have dead oxen.  Dead cows and dead longhorns but no dead oxen.  I think I can live with that - just use some of those dead cows.

Another good day - less likely to make progress tomorrow because the wife is desirous of a day out of the house which I could use too.  Alas, she probably means shopping but I like nature.  Maybe we can do both.