Traffic Jam!

Introduction

I've written a few posts on paper models recently, so I think it's only fair that I photograph my entire collection.  As well as being a visual treat for your eyes (I hope!), getting the entire collection together in one place also allows me to take stock, find any notable omissions, spot any damage that may have occurred and so on.

Everything together in one big picture

So, let's break this down...

Military Vehicles

My army trucks and APCs are all from Genet Models, which used to be known as Ebbles Models, I think.  These all come from the Patrol and Convoy kits - at least, that's what they were called when I bought them.  I think that the site may have been rearranged since then.

One note about the Genet kits: they're huge!  If I remember correctly then I printed these out at 84% or so of the original size - and they're still very large vehicles, if not quite so overwhelming as before.  At least you can resize paper models easily!

Emergency Services

My collection of emergency response vehicles are almost entirely police machines and almost entirely from WorldWorks Games. There is a single ambulance but no fire engines (a distinct gap in the market, I think.  I've not seen a fire engine yet that I would wish to build).

The other outsider is a solitary white "No Go Zone" police car in British colours.  It's a nice idea, but the car body has a very complex shape and the texturing is bland.  I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless you are an experienced card modeller and have a particular need for UK-branded cop cars.

"Regular" Cars

Here is my collection of compact and sedan cars.  All of the ones at the back are from WorldWorks, but the four at the front are from Stoelzel's Structures, if I remember right.

Note the convertible at the front: I'm very pleased to have it, but it did take a lot more effort to build than any of the other vehicles here.  Obviously, it has an interior and that complicates the design quite a bit.

Also note that the convertible is a little larger than the other "civilian" automobiles.  This inconsistency of scale is something that afflicts most manufacturers to some extent.  Mind you, I think that WorldWorks is probably a far worse offender than Stoelzel in this respect.

Trucks and Buses

I have a relatively small collection of large commercial vehicles: 2 buses and 2 articulated trucks (with 1 extra trailer).  Also there's a garbage truck.  This latter is an early WorldWorks model and although it has all the right components, it just doesn't look quite right to me.  The cab is too narrow, the body too wide and tall.  Additionally, the double tyres at the back are badly aligned with the single tyres at the front.  It's an odd model.

On another note, buses are some of the easiest card models to make, so I would recommend them strongly to anyone who wished to begin making this type of kit.

Pick-ups, Estates and Vans

I have considerably more light commercial vehicles than I do of the large ones.  Most of these are from WorldWorks, though 2 in the front row are Stoelzel's and the white box van at the rear is a No Go Zone kit (one of my least favourite models.  It was a little awkward to build and I don't think that the result is very impressive)

Note that this picture clearly shows one of the worst discrepancies in scale between the WorldWorks vans and their pick-ups.  I'm not an expert on cars and trucks in real life, but surely the vans should be rather bigger than the pick-ups?  If anything, it's the other way round for these models.  As before, I could resize the printouts, but it's somewhat annoying to have to do so when the kits are all from the same publisher.

Oddments

These are the remaining vehicles that didn't seem to fit into any other category.  There are 2 "Lamborgharri"s, 2 burnt out compacts, 3 motorcycles, a classic roadster and a hearse.  The latter is from Mega Miniatures; the rest are again from WorldWorks.

Most of these models (apart from the hearse) are significantly more complex than average to build.  You should be able to tell this just by looking at them!

Conclusion

This may look like a lot of models, but remember that each one is very cheap to make.  Once the kit has been purchased, each new car is typically just half a sheet of cardboard and a little printer ink and glue.  They're also relatively quick to build, which is partly why I have so many: card vehicles are very good filler models between other projects or when you only have small amounts of time for the hobby.  I've never sat down to build more than 2 or 3 vehicles at any one time, yet over the years the collection has grown steadily!

So, what do I think is missing from this collection?  Well, I could use more estate cars (station wagons).  The Stoelzel's car set has a number of these in it so I'm certain to build some in due course.  There are no good fire engines on the market, at least ones that I know about.  And I've never come across any kits for construction or agricultural vehicles, apart from a single excavator (?) in one of the WorldWorks kits.  I'd really like a cement mixer; imagine what you could do in a game with that!

28mm Big Rigs

Introduction

A little while ago, I mentioned that I was building some WorldWorks trucks for my 28mm modern wargames such as All Things Zombie: here.  Note that this was an impulse decision and not based on a need for trucks in any upcoming scenario.  Still, here we are!

So far, I have built 3 semi-trailers and 2 tractors.  That's probably enough for now; much as I enjoy building these vehicles I do need some time for all the other model-making projects which have been on hold for the past 2 weeks or so!

The Container Semi-Trailer

Both the red and the blue tractors have been built straight from the WorldWorks Mayhem Industrial kit and so I won't spend a lot of time describing them - the only modification is the addition of a socket to take the trailer's coupling, as described in my previous article.  Mayhem Industrial gives 3 choices of colour scheme for each of the long-nose and cab-over variants (blue, yellow & green for the long-nose and red, white & black for the cab-over), but sadly there's no black long-nose.  Maybe I'll kitbash one some day, with a little rubber duck mascot on top of the bonnet/hood?

The container semi-trailer is also built straight from the kit and is also one of the 3 possible variants that are supplied.

The Flatbed Semi-Trailer

As well as the container semi-trailer, I thought that a flatbed would be useful.  I can put any kind of loads I like on this: logs, concrete pipe sections or large pieces of machinery.

For the most part, this is also built straight from the WorldWorks kit; it's basically just the container semi-trailer but without the container on top.  There are a few minor modifications to my version, though:

• I've added a "headboard" at the front, to stop loads from sliding forwards into the tractor.  This was cut from a spare piece of the trailer bed, so it matches the colouring and style perfectly.
• The card for the upper and lower sides of the trailer bed were separated and then used to sandwich a piece of mounting board.  This makes the model much thicker and rather stronger than it would have been otherwise.
• As with all of my semi-trailers, I've glued a Hama bead on the underside to act as a pivot.  This fits into the tractor's socket and thus holds the rig together.

The Tanker Semi-Trailer

Articulated tankers are such an important part of many movies and other sources of inspiration that I just had to have one.  However there was no such model in the Mayhem Industrial set.  What was I to do?

So, there are essentially 2 parts to this model: the undercarriage and the tank itself.  The undercarriage is all from the WorldWorks kit, but very heavily modified.  The tank is entirely my own design.

I'm not a graphic designer of any kind, but I'm reasonably good with 3d shapes and how they can be built up from 2d designs (nets).  The tank itself is just an oval prism, though I swept back the front end a bit.  I have added some texture to the model, but sadly it doesn't look very evident in any of these pictures.

Rolling a card tube of this length is very difficult, so I added an old block of balsa along the centreline.  Even with this support, I'm not entirely happy with the way that the tank turned out.  The front was particularly troublesome and I couldn't get the curve even from top to bottom - I don't know why.  Perhaps I should have added more formers along the length of the tank?

Compared with the tube, the top block (with the hatches) was very easy to build.  Note that this tanker is about 4 or 5cm shorter than it would be if the model were true to scale.  That matches the length of the WorldWorks semi-trailers.  I haven't measured them but I suspect that this is a compromise in the name of playability.

As mentioned before, the undercarriage of this model has been adapted from the WorldWorks components.  Here are the main differences:

• The "underbody" has been narrowed considerably, so that it just peeks out from underneath the tank.
• I've changed the wheel arrangement from 2 axles with double tyres on each side (i.e. 8 wheels) to a 3 axle, single type arrangement (i.e. 6 wheels).  This involved both widening and lengthening the axle unit, as well as sourcing some single wheels from the tractor unit.
• A mudguard was taken from the "long-nose" tractor and lengthened (a lot) and narrowed (a little).  I also changed the colour to a neutral grey, before fitting the mudguards around a specially-designed black half-oval.

Conclusion

These are nice models to have and will no doubt find a use in my ATZ games or anything with a similar (modern) setting.  For the most part, they're straightforward to build (but oh, I'm tired of making wheels!).  The tanker semi-trailer took far longer than all the others put together; this was entirely due to the design work needed.  Every time I undertake such a task, I come out of it wondering where all the hours went!

10-10, Good buddy!

More Card Models

Introduction

After my last post about card vehicles, UrbanWolf and others offered suggestions to address some of the issues that I was having with the models - thanks, guys.  I investigated these ideas and found myself going rather further than I had intended.  The remainder of this post describes all this new activity, at least so far.

Mega Miniatures Hearse

Whilst browsing over the WargamesVault site, I discovered that Mega Miniatures had made some paper models.  Even though Mega Miniatures is now all but defunct, these models are still available to purchase, typically for 50 cents (USD) each.  Many of them are a bit too cartoon-like for my taste, but some are very nice.

This is the hearse from the "Hearse and Mausoleum" set.  As paper vehicles go, it's pretty basic, but it fits together well and is quick and easy to make.

The original kit is really just a hollow shell, so I've filled in the underside with some black mounting board.  As well as stiffening the model, this adds a little substance to an otherwise lightweight model.

I've also built up some wheels using components from other kits; the original just had the outer wheel silhouette and that would have had very little strength on its own.  Mind you, the added wheels alone probably took as much build time as the rest of the model.

The back window has some sort of "ghoul" peering out; I'm not sure that I like this.  I might eventually build this model again, but edit the source to remove the creature!

Note that this hearse has wing mirrors!  I've never seen another paper vehicle kit that had such a feature; it shows the different emphasis that the kit designer has used: wing mirrors, but no underbody or wheels. That's just an observation on my part and shouldn't be taken as a criticism, mind you.

Warm Acre: White Van

Here's a model from another publisher of paper vehicles who is probably better known for their metal miniature range.  This time it's a white van from Warm Acre's catchy-named "Vehicles for Modern 28mm Wargaming" set.  As well as this box van, the set also includes another type of white van and red and blue versions of a small car.

This time, the designer has gone for a complex body shape on the cab, with curves in 3 dimensions (most paper vehicles have slab sides/flat faces, for simplicity).  The truck also has a complex way of positioning the wheels; again I felt it necessary to build these up considerably with components from other kits.  Between the cab and the wheels, this has to be one of the most complex paper/card kits that I have undertaken in a long while, so I wouldn't recommend it for beginners.

You might expect that the more realistic shape of the cab and wheel positioning would lead to a much better end result.  In this case, I think that the publisher has pretty much ignored any attempt at texturing the surfaces, so the vehicle shows no signs of rust, splashes of dirt, reflections or anything like that.  Additionally, the dashed fold marks are very obvious; these could have been disguised better.   In my view this lack of detail drags the Warm Acre models down a long way, especially compared with texturing experts such as WorldWorks Games.

Note that Warm Acre also make a British police car, police van and ambulance, as well as a number of buildings.  These are subjects that are difficult to find elsewhere, so if you want them as paper models then this may be the way to go.

WorldWorks Trucks

For a long time, I've regretted not buying the Mayhem Industrial set from WorldWorks Games whilst it was still in their catalogue.  However, after my last post I was informed that it was still available from paizo.com .  Although it was rather more expensive than the other kits described above, I wanted some big rigs for my games and this was the best way to get them, I thought.

With my newly-purchased download, I set to work.  So far I've completed a single tractor unit: the red "cab over".  Note that most of the shapes in this model are simple cuboids or cylinders; from that point of view its an easy kit to build.  Of course, the truck is composed from quite a lot of different such pieces, so it may be straightforward but it takes longer than some other paper kits!

The truck models from Mayhem Industrial don't have a coupling between the tractor and trailer.  I suppose that the model-maker is expected to either glue them together or to just rest one piece on the other.  That wasn't good enough for me, so I've built a socket into the back of the tractor - the insert I used came from the end of a cheap felt-tip pen that had recently expired.  When I finish a trailer unit, I'll add a spigot in the right location on the underside (probably made from a Hama bead, as we have thousands of those around the house and my kids aren't likely to miss a few).  The trailer will then just plug loosely into the tractor and allow the 2 parts to be positioned at any angle whilst not falling apart easily.

As you can see, I haven't got as far with my first trailer.  Most of the sub-assemblies have been completed, but there is still a little way to go before this container body is finished.

I plan to make at least one more tractor (probably a "long nose") and several trailers.  In particular, I'd like a flatbed trailer and a tanker, though the latter will require some kitbashing as this WorldWorks kit doesn't include such an option.

Light Bar for "Echo 1"

One of the things that I mentioned in my last post was a desire to add a light bar to Stoelzel's Structures "Echo 1", to see if the vehicle might resemble more closely that used by the Ghostbusters in the film of that name.  I've taken the police car light bar from Mayhem Police and used GIMP to change it from red-white-blue to blue-white-blue.  Note that for now, the light bar is just placed roughly in the right position - it's not glued on yet.  This is really because I want to know what my readers think: does it improve the vehicle?  The original "Ecto 1" had a whole lot of other clutter on the roof as well, but I don't feel up to emulating that.  What do you think?

Card Models from Summer 2014

Introduction

I've mentioned this before (here, for example) that I like to take paper models on holiday with me.  They're light and easy to transport, don't require a whole box full of tools or paints and can be built in small increments.  For these reasons, they're useful for filling some of those small periods of otherwise dead time that always occur when away from home.  Of course, I could just as easily have watched television or read a book and I did a little of that too.

It should be fairly obvious from the pictures below that I'm talking about small items here: vehicles and furniture rather than entire buildings.  These smaller pieces are often a chore when built in long bursts, but fit very well into the odd 10 or 15 minute period.

So, what did I make during this year's summer fortnight away?  Read on...

Vehicles

Most of the cardboard vehicles I have come from various WorldWorks kits (and I'm deeply regretting that I never bought the warehouse model with the 18-wheel trucks before they withdrew it!).  However, this pair come from Stoelzel's Structures instead.  They can be found in the Auto Park Playset, which has dozens and dozens of vehicles with it.  Admittedly many of these are repaints, but even so there are enough basic body shapes to populate a large freeway or two!

I already have many cars, so I only took 2 more such models to build on holiday.  The rusty saloon will be useful for games with gangers or as decoration for a slightly unsavoury part of town.  I really like the station wagon, though I can't help feeling that it needs some flashing lights on top.  Maybe I'll find a light-bar from another kit and add it to this one?

Incidentally, the Stoelzel's vehicles are very nice, but I have some issues with the curves where the windscreen meets the bonnet (for those readers in the USA, where the windshield meets the hood).  I can't get this joint to work smoothly; it always seems to end up as nearly a straight line, so maybe the kit would have been better just made that way in the first place?

The SWAT armoured personnel carrier and the police motorcycle are WorldWorks kits, from the Mayhem Police set.  This is one of their older sets, but I prefer these over the more recent kits for the buildings.  All the newer WorldWorks structures use the TerrainLinX modular system, which is much more labour-intensive to build; it doesn't suit me at all.  Of course, props and vehicles aren't affected by this anyway (just buildings).

Despite the relative sizes, the SWAT truck was rather easier to build than the motorbike.  They're both more complex kits than a basic saloon or estate car, but the bike has a lot of components and they're mostly quite fiddly as well.

Furniture

I've mentioned recently (here) that I am working on a hospital in which to set games of All Things Zombie.  Well, the shell of Ward 1 is about 80% finished (so only another 3 wards, canteens or operating theatres to go, plus entrance lobby, corridors, roofs, fire escapes and so on).  The Grekwood hospital kit provides the fabric of the building, (exterior and interior walls), but no furniture.  I could have bought the Grekwood bed models as well (they're very nice indeed), but I figured that the quantity I'd need would be rather extravagant.

Instead, I've started to build beds from the old Ebbles Miniatures Derelict 2 Megaset.  Ebbles Miniatures closed down some years ago, but I believe the kit can still be found in the archive section of the Genet Models catalogue.  Derelict 2 is really a collection of components for a SciFi spaceship or outpost, but the beds from the barracks will just about work for my hospital.  I'll still need to find some compatible models for a bedside locker and a visitor chair though.

As an afterthought, I also built one of the conference room tables from Derelict 2.  For a table, this is a surprisingly complex model but it fits together well and is quite robust.  I'm not sure that I'll need it in the hospital, though...

The Bar

The final picture shows the fittings for Germy's bar.  I've had the printouts for this free model for a long time, but somehow it never made it to the head of the model-making queue.  I figured that if I built the furniture then maybe I'd find enough enthusiasm to produce the building to house it on my return from holiday.  So far that plan hasn't worked; the exceptionally hot weather has reduced my modelling mojo considerably!

Right, I've got to go and watch the opening ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games now, so see you all later...

Scenery: Lock up garages

Introduction

Lock up garages are a common sight in UK towns, often near the slightly older suburbs or housing estates.  They are typically arranged as a detached block, not directly connected to any house and can be found in back lanes or small areas of what would otherwise be waste land.  I don't know if such buildings are found anywhere else in the world, though perhaps any overseas readers could tell me one way or the other.

Originally they were intended for local residents whose properties were too small to have their own garage, but now they might be rented for other purposes.  I've seen local building & construction firms store spare lumber in a lockup, as well as hobbyists who keep a sailing boat or occasionally-used motorbike safe.  Lockups are even used occasionally to store the corpse after a particularly gruesome murder, though that's very much one of the less common things to put in them!

28mm Lockup

This is my paper and foamcore model of a lock up garage.  It's mounted on a 7" square tile and could easily be extended by adding other similar units to the sides and/or facing the doors.  This model is a kitbash; it draws heavily on the Armoury from Worldworks Games (the old Armoury kit, not the newer TerrainlinX one; though that might work as well).

The inside of the model is divided into 3 separate units.  For these, I just resized the walls and door from the repair shop that comes in the Worldworks Armoury kit.  If I was being adventurous then I could have decorated them with shelves, toolboxes and other such clutter, but I suppose I was lazy in this respect.  The floors are simple concrete textures; I cannot remember if they too are from the Armoury kit or from elsewhere.

The outside walls are also taken from the Armoury kit.  In this case, I've chosen to resize a plain brick texture for the sides and rear, though it would be entirely appropriate to have graffiti on some or all instead.

The front wall is probably the most heavily-modified piece.  It started as a plain brick wall, but I've added 3 door frames from the Armoury's garage, somewhat resized.  However, I wanted to make this block look old and tatty and so I didn't want the doors  themselves to be identical.  2 are from the Armoury kit, though one has been lightened up a bit.  The third door is a texture that I found on the internet and resized & cropped appropriately.  I found that searching Google for "metal siding" was the best way of finding such images, though even then it took some effort to find exactly what I wanted.

The Roof

I made the roof for all 3 garages as a single piece; I felt it would have looked messy to create separate covers for each.  This piece is somewhat complicated because I've given it a slight slope from front to back.  Fortunately, my trigonometry is good and it wasn't too hard for me to work out the correct measurements and angles; if I'd been less confident then a flat roof would have been easy and would have worked almost as well.

The sides of the roof are covered with a pattern from a Worldworks kit (can't remember which), somewhat extended and reshaped.  I think they were some form of roof edging originally, so they work well for this purpose.  The roof itself uses more "metal siding" textures.

Gameplay

In games of All Things Zombie, I class each garage as a separate building for the purposes of discovering items or people.  Probably this is a bit generous; it's not that likely that you'd find people in such a storage area.  However, you might find all manner of common stuff, such as building materials (for barricades), cars (possibly part-dismantled!), large tools or who knows what else?

What I did on my holiday...

Traveling Light

Every summer, we try to take our young family away for one or two week's holiday.  There have been one or two times where this didn't happen, typically because of great uncertainty over job security and the consequent reluctance to spend any money.  However, this wasn't such a year and we've just returned from 2 excellent weeks vacation in Dumfries and Galloway.

I've always tried to take some model-making stuff with me on long holidays.  There's always some quiet time at some point in the day - maybe after the children are in bed in the evening or perhaps after breakfast but before going out for the day.  I like to make use of these interludes to keep up my hobby.

In the past, I've taken primed miniatures and paints, but this hasn't worked very well.  The long(ish) drying times mean that the setup cannot be moved quickly, the models are difficult to pack safely and taking a small range of paints means that I always find I'm missing one that I really need.  Instead, I've taken to building card vehicles for ATZ or similar games.

The Model Pack

So, here's my holiday model-making travel setup.  It all fits in an A4 box that was designed for scrapbooking.  Actually, I use a lot of these boxes (and their A5, A6 and "peel off sticker box" cousins) for storing models as well, but that's not really relevant right now.

On the way out, the kit holds the tools I'll need.  Most important are the knife, steel ruler, scribe and glue.  A few clamps can be useful and a black marker or felt pen for edging is pretty much essential too.  I've also included some offcuts of foamcore, to use as stiffeners for vehicles with large, flat sides or underbellies.

Finally, I include a number of card sheets with the desired models printed on them.  Obviously these need to be prepared before leaving on holiday, but that's not too onerous a task.

The Models

This year I thought that I'd build some military vehicles from the Ebbles' "Convoy" and "Patrol" sets (the contents of the latter now appear to be sold separately as the APV and GPV).  These have been on my wish list for some time as they would be useful for playing any of the military scenarios from ATZ: Haven.  I also took a small assortment of models from the old Mayhem vehicle collection and other WorldWorks kits.

So, how did it go?  I started by carefully cutting out the first sheet for one of the Convoy trucks.  Immediately I discovered that I hadn't measured the foamcore offcuts I had with me; all were too narrow for this big boy.  Argh!  Bang goes my idea for building all the transport vehicles I had intended...

Next up was a sheet with 3 motorcycles on it.  These are large touring bikes, I think, rather than trail bikes or mopeds.  The builds were surprisingly straightforward, if a little tedious due to the number of pieces for each bike and the small size of the components.  A bonus was that the chassis is exactly the right size to be wrapped around a small piece of 5mm foamcore for extra rigidity.  Surely this is just fortuitous; WorldWorks would never have thought to design it that way - or would they?  My respect for those guys is always growing.

The custom-painted compact car was an easy model to make.  I've done a number of the same shape before in different colours and the only real trick is to cut the front of the vehicle from the body and glue it on separately (otherwise it doesn't fit as well as it might).  Perfect for the aspiring boy racer.

The van is one of the easiest WorldWorks vehicles to make (only the bus is simpler, I think), although the finished model looks a bit small when compared with the WWG cars.  This one is in the livery of some touring troupe of do-gooders called the "B team".  Anyone ever heard of them?

Last year (or maybe the year before that) I printed a sheet containing a black and a white sedan, but never got round to building them.  This year I thought I should do so.  Now, the WorldWorks sedans are a bit pidgeon-toed if built "out of the box", as the wheels align with the slopes at the front and rear of the bodywork.  In all apart from my first 2 or 3 builds of this kit, I've made some adaptations to allow all the wheels to sit parallel with each other.

This modification does require the use of fully-round wheels rather than the half-round ones that come by default.  Somewhere I have an entire A4 sheet of such wheels, edited from the original by doubling the length of the tread on the tyre and adding a full second side.  This sheet should supply more sedan wheels than I'm ever likely to need - but I forgot to include it in the holiday pack.  So for now, these cars have no wheels.

Finally, here are a couple of the Ebbles' GPVs.  These are very frustrating models.  They mostly fit together very well, but I hate the wheel arches!  The first GPV I made from the bottom up; the wheel arches were fitted into the body shell before the front and back of the vehicle were attached.  This was a bit fiddly and I wasn't entirely happy with it.

For the second GPV, I changed my approach and fitted the wheel arches, the front and the back panels to the upper body before attaching the underside.  Big mistake!  It proved impossible to glue the bottom of this model neatly and the whole construction is warped considerably (one corner of the underside is maybe 2 or 3mm higher than the other three).  Careful placement of the wheels means that an observer probably won't be able to tell, unless they turn the model over and look at its belly.  Still, I know - and now so do you.

Returning Home

The model box was padded with some spare socks to stop everything rattling about for the return journey, so it all arrived safely.  I'm not sure that I'd want to take my travel pack with me if I was flying, though.  Even if the constructed kits didn't get damaged with rough handling, the sharp knife and bottle of liquid might just make airport security a bit too interested.  Still, for a car journey this works just fine and I made up some useful models for which I wouldn't have found time otherwise.

There's another part to the sorry tale of the military vehicles.  On my return home, I compared my 2 new GPVs against the 2 I had already made.  As you can see from the picture above, the earlier one is in a different colour scheme from the recently-built model.  Which means that my existing 2 GPVs and 1 APV are not the same as all the Convoy and Patrol stuff I printed out just before my holiday.  I should have checked first.  Bother.