A first layout for Lodgepole Creek

Since the renaming of my "out on the plains" town from Cedar Creek to Lodgepole Creek, I felt obliged to layout the set of Bluemoon's Old West buildings in "15/18 mm" (that will work fine for those doing 1/72 scale gaming, I am quite sure).  There is no real rhyme nor reason, I just laid out the buildings to see how much space they take up - and with streets probably too narrow for wagon traffic.  There are 25 unique buildings and a few with lean-tos.  I even noticed one has an integral water trough!  Kinda cool.  The length from end to end is a bit over six-and-one-half feet, didn't measure the width.

I had been planning on using other buildings for this town but when I laid these out I thought they would work for Lodgepole Creek.  Not a final decision but, like the heading of this post says, a first layout - of these buildings any way - for Lodgepole Creek.  Cedar Creek got an earlier layout with other buildings but that poor town got retired before it ever got 'built'.

The building at the far end of the street is the train station, not much more than a whistle stop.  One wonders if Hollywood ever got the message that train stations were rather important gathering points for the locals, the gateway into the rest of the world.

The main town, Anachronism, is getting a scratch built station - the passenger station isn't a lot more grandiose than the one photographed here but the freight station is quite substantial.  It is not, however, as grand as the riverside warehouse to accommodate boat traffic!  The main town is an influential river port, after all, replete with floating gambling houses, aka steam boats.

 Losing the light - and no handy skylight - when this shot last shot was taken.

Stepping into Anachronism and beyond

So, I pulled a dozen civilian groups out of their 'storage' containers and put them in a "preparation for painting" container.  They will be the first citizens of Anachronism, my main Pony West town, to get painted.  Each group currently has two 'dead' figures to go with it, might back down to only one, might stay with two.  All of these figures are on foot, mostly unarmed but a few armed figures scattered about in a few of the groups.  Those dozen groups - of a dozen people per group - represent one third of my figures for this town.  I'm starting with the more pedestrian folks and working my way up to the fancier folk, working men and women and such for now.

One type of figure I don't have much of is peaceable, unarmed civilians mounted - unless you count the ones mounted on wagons as drivers and such.  I think I can live without them since I have considerably more than enough figures for this period already.

I also added in to the same box three groups of Mexicans, two of peasants and one armed, and three Mexican horse holders with six horses.  These will be for Alkali Wells, the southwest town.  The armed men will be the 'henchmen' of El Pollo Grande, a created 'character' figure who has both a mounted, dismounted, and dead version.  These groups are new additions from recent orders, not that I needed but chose to get - they were on sale at a discount form the manufacturer, Peter Pig

Another recent addition were two groups of dismounted infantry and one group of mounted infantry, already have extra army dead to assign to these groups - even some extra dead horses for the mounted infantry.  These will help me in re-creating my primary northern plains battle of choice: The Battle of Rosebud, not nearly as famous as Little Big Horn but a much better mix of troops.  I suppose I could add more mounted native American's to improve the number of allies for the army that made all the difference at this battle, Shoshone and Crow if memory serves.  These, too, were on discount, from QRF Freikorps' Yellow Ribbon range this time.

I now need to select the first four of the White Hat/Black Hat mounted/foot/dead sets to prepare for painting.  I do have an order on its way that will add a group of Mexican federales that I will have to decide how they impact my current organization.  Most likely they will shunt aside the reservation police somehow.  The police will stay in the collection just in a minor variation of role perhaps.

No photos of this because pictures of unprepared, unprimed figures are not particularly elucidating.

Taking stock - of the stock

Taking stock of the stock?  Yes, this time as in 'livestock', what every good husband should do, at least in the realm of animal husbandry.  Below are meant to be denizens of farms and ranches and maybe a few homesteaders and the like.

I decided to make a decision on my cattle, how many of each would be what breed, that sort of thing. Already have the 96 longhorns with their six dead.  So, sorted it out that there will be 48 Hereford with 4 dead, 48 black baldies with 4 dead, 24 each of two dairy herds with 2 dead each (48 + 4) - which breeds to be decided - maybe Holstein and milking shorthorns (the latter being a bit more colorful), 48 highland hairy with 4 dead, and one group of 12 oxen with 1 dead (there is one more dead assigned to 12 aurochs for much older time frame games).  There are also 24 African cattle with 2 dead that I can add to my longhorn herd to bring it up to 120 head if I feel the need - the paint jobs will be similar.  All but the oxen are primed with a few painted though likely to get reworked.  Excluding the Aurochs and the African cattle, that is 300 head.  A respectable herd to me.

Equine flesh is not so numerous here (though remarkably plentiful within the overall Pony West collection).  Here there are 12 mules, 12 donkeys, 12 Clydesdales, 6 mustangs, and 24 other domestic equines.  The other horses are with mounted figures, as dismount point markers, or just saddled horses at hitching posts - and a fairly good supply of dead horses.  There is also a pony herd of 72 plus 24 ponies with their cloth 'saddles' and a cavalry remount remuda of 24 more horses.

For sheep, I have 102 plus six to convert to dead sheep.  Pigs number 78 plus 6 to convert to dead.  There are also 48 goats but none planned as dead.  For poultry, I have 48 geese and 132 total chickens (well, there are four more for the Mexican leader's foot stand - he of the appelation El Pollo Grande (The Big Chicken).

Not sure why there are Highland hairy cattle for my Old West (or Pony West as I'm calling it now) but I'm sure it must have something to do with a Scotsman.  Wasn't there a movie with the Duke friends with a Scottish rancher?  I'm pretty sure there was.

There are also, not fully counted, quite a few dogs and cats to be included.  Almost all of the above is primed and ready for painting with bases ready.  Just a matter, mostly, of splashing on some paint and then texturing the bases.

Why so many?  Well, temptation kept striking and I felt I needed this and then I discovered that and one thing led to another and, voila, I'm quite the rancher/farmer.  At least in 15 mm!

What do you mean, two posts in one day?  No law against that.

Mountains in situ, sort of

No 'great shakes' here, just a shot of the game table, temporarily, cleaned off so I sat my 'mountains' in progress on it for a record shot.  A careful observer will note there are nine 'standing' mountains as partially seen in an earlier post.  Clearly these still need some work.  But now I can come here to remind myself what I have to finish.

And here are what were originally steps up to a different - and rightfully abandoned - terrain project. These will just be used for edge of table hills  - though I have been tempted to put them on end and create one more much taller mountain.  Still might.

One day I will get back to painting and finishing terrain.  I just need to chase away that delinquent who keeps stealing my free time.  Err.

Longhorns and Cowboys - and lunch, too.

Been a while since last post, busy in other areas of life - including some other miniatures stuff.  But getting back to work on miniatures stronger this year than in the last few years with a push on my Old West collection.

Head on shot of 96 longhorn cattle with four cowboys that have been painted for decades, from the long defunct Frontier range of figures - there are also six Frontier longhorns in the mix - all painted but likely to get some rework to be more like longhorns, and two other painted.  Notice the lariats (ropes) in the hand of the cowboy on the right front - all four have them in slightly different angles (my modifications - the positioning, not the lariats).

 The shot below shows the dead cattle at the rear of the herd.

 A reverse angle without the dead cattle.

 A shot of the herd without the cowboys.

 All 18 of the mounted cowboys.

 The six dead cowboys, the two dead longhorns, and four cows.  Also two destroyed wagons and one skeletal horse and one skeletal man.

 The 18 dismounted cowboys - the four painted ones are Frontier.

 The two chuck wagons and their horses on painting strips (just cardboard).  Why two?  Rival ranchers, of course.  Besides the longhorns, I have a bunch of other cattle that will allow additional herds, at least one will be Herefords and another black baldies.  I will also have some dairy herds.  Plenty of cattle to keep those cowboys busy - and to fill the pens in my stock yard I will be building, already have the fences.

Nothing to get particularly excited about - except forward progress.  And that is mildly exciting to me.  Most of the non-Frontier figures are from Peter Pig but a bunch of the longhorns are from Minifigs and Irregular Miniatures.  48 of the longhorns are Peter Pig and the two dead longhorns are Peter Pig, just with the stands cut off

Towns and Courthouse growing

A few random photographs of 41 buildings that progressed today if only in a small way.

At the far left are 14 houses and then moving closer various industrial buildings and finally at the far right and nearest the camera is the courthouse.  Opposite the courthouse is the train station and to its left is the freight house.  To the left of the courthouse is what will be the Catholic church and then to its left two more smaller churches.

A view from the farther end.

 A closer view of the courthouse, there will be four columns under the overhang in the center and the same on the other side.

The train station had a bit of an oops when I glued on the roof - it is slightly askew so I'll have to work around that when finishing the building.

The buildings on the right might be some more houses.  Need lots of houses.  Or they might be small businesses.

These represent my scratch built - in process - peaked roof buildings.  There are quite a few flat roofed false fronts in a similar state: assembled and ready for detailing and painting and signs where appropriate.  

Some of the buildings have glued together box walls but most of them have solid wood under-stories as it were cut from either 2x3 or 2x4 dimensional lumber and run through a table saw to get them to correct height and width, also to square them up.  The challenge is doing 41 in a single day means a few minor issues arose such as a couple of roofs a little tweaked but, again, a little effort in further parts of the process should yield improved results.

I did pull out some of my resin buildings to guide size choices.  Quite a difference when placing the Peter Pig Old West saloon next to the Bluemoon Old West saloon - the latter completely dwarfs the former.  Also have quite a few Stone Mountain resin buildings and a few others of swap meet origin and some stone cast buildings of similar provenance.  All will find a place within my three towns:

Anachronism will be the cow town and and jumping off point where cattle are driven to be loaded on train cars to head east for slaughter and populous markets.  It will also be the last stop before wagon trains head west for Oregon Territory or supply trains head towards the southwest.

Lodgepole Creek will be the boom town and end of track invading the territory of the northern plains tribes.

And Alkali Wells will be the southwest town battling to survive within Apacheria.

I haven't done a careful tally but I can estimate there will be about 160 buildings, if not more, for the three towns.  I just might have at least 5 civilians for each building.  That's a lot of civilians!

Update

After losing access to most of my blogs for unknown reasons, seems to have gotten sorted out so I can post updates now.  Only 'big' news here is that all 120 buffalo are now painted as are all 36 pronghorn antelope.  However, they still await the texturing of the bases.  And no photos at the moment but I thought a little note will show this blog hasn't gone into a permanent dormant status.