Thanks for the comments guys I hope to get a bit more done this evening, my aim is to get at least the first 3000 points finished by the end of march. So far all that is needed are 2 planes (which are still in a state of half done ), the 8 stands of grunts and 7 IFVs shown undercoated above and 9 more MBTs still unbuilt.

Think i should be able to do that

After painting 12 stands of infantry (pics up when th bases are done ) i felt like a break so

A little of this


Cut up a bit


and stuck together


Makes a nice little monorail


Just got to put the shell on it and paint it

Some images for scale... what do people reckon to the length? is an extra carriage (or 2+) needed?

I don't think another car is neccessary. Looks like each is 75-80mm in length, right? that means that a second center car would bring the total length to nearly a foot. What you have is a good length; it will stand out on the table, but not be a scale kilometer long...

Are you just going to clad the outside in card? I'll be interested to see this project progress, especially whan you get to the rails themselves.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Not bad guess , the cars are all 70mm long (the two end cars have the sides cropped to 60mm) I was thinking that it was going to be a bit long if i was to add another car.

Yup, my plan was to simply clad the sides in card and hopefully blend the front to be a smooth curve with thick paper.

The rail itself will be made of other H beams, not entirely sure how i'm going to connect it to the ground yet, still working on that.

It's getting really bad. When I do freehand sketches for plasticard projects, I'm generally only off by a millimeter or two. Again, they look really good! One option to add cars that I just thought of: Remove the center car and add a pair of short flatbeds to hold the EW tanks...

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Monorail! Monorail! Monorail! Is there a chance the track could bend?

The first plan for bent track is currently being worked on, if that fails there is another plan for that...

The bigger issue is the train can't go round the bends at the minute... I have two potential solutions, though i'm not sure how either will work...

infantry as promissed



just got 7 IFVs and 9 MBTs to go!

I dno't know how useful this will be to you, KivArn, but you've gotten me thinking, and that's dangerous.

My thoughts on curved track parts 1 and 2.

Part 1 - the track

I think your best bet for curved track will be to use a rigid curved form, like a kitchen pot, and laminate strips around it. I have a pot with a box- style track made of .020" x .125" strips with .040 square strips sandwiched between it, and it seems to hold it's shape well. I might even suggest laminating more thinner strips together, to minimize the tension and compression experienced by any single strip. Perhaps 4 of the side peices would have been better, but I don't have enough anyway... Making curved pieces with a compass cutter is a pain, especially if you want reproducability, IMO.

Part 2 - Fitting the cars to the track

It's probably best to design the cars around the track, instead of the other way around. Using two thin trucks to hold the cars is probably less of a pain than having the slots go the length of the cars, but separating the clampy bits so it's loose in straightaways, but tight on curves, is probably second best. Last best would be to cut away part of the H-beams to allow the curve to slot in.

Sorry, that turned into more of an essay than I intended. Further info/progress may or may not appear in my own blog, depending on whether I get distracted, or rather, too distracted. Now I need to figure out how to design the pylons to hold the track up, and whether I want Magnetic or hitch style couplers... Sigh, more projects to hop between.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Tell me about it...

My initial thought was magnetic couplers, that however requires me to find my magnets... last seen about 4 years ago and 2 house moves :S,

The cars (and full length trucks) were designed for the track originally based off the image below, however it was done for straight tracks only! (bad thought in hindsight - have ideas on ways to correct this though)
One possibility was to slightly shorten the width of the rails (at least at the curves) and widen the slot of the trucks to allow for a greater bend in the track which i think was similar ideas to the second of your suggestions.




As for the curves, my initial idea put on about 0.5* over 3 days... so that plan got ditched (man those H beams are strong!).

Second attempt got 2* (along a 330mm length of track) in about 2 mins, so that's a better plan and the cars still can go along the track atm! I'm not quite sure how far i want to curve each section of track yet either since high speed trains don't tend to like sharp corners...

I'm still working on ideas for how to suspend the track as well, and the best way to have it as useful terrain (in terms of ease of use and variety). An interesting thought is that if suspended high enough it could effectively cut off a portion of the board to titans as they can't step over it!

Thanks for all your input as well Spectrar

A few little updates....

The flyboys



One of the front line platoon's IFVs


Only 1 formation to go before I've done the first 3k

and whilst i'm waiting a for a small part from my order (psst dom/Tom ) I've got lost in a little wood...

The heavy armour rolls in...



The Superheavies

ShadowswElectra

The full force (thus far)

great looking army

Tim NZ

Enemy flyby recon




and ground recon

Thanks