Trails and Tracks

I have a lot of scenery, but one of the things that are missing from my tabletop are railway tracks. In the past I have thought about making my own using second-hand model railway tracks from EBay. But this always seemed like too much work and as I'm lazy, I started looking around for some other solutions. I found it in the form of Ironclad Miniatures 15mm track sections. So, I ordered myself a few test pieces to see what they were like in real life. 

In real life, they are excellent, really well detailed and a thousand times better than anything I could knock up myself. I painted them in flat grey, drybrushed Stone Grey over the top, then washed them in Flory Washes Dark Wash and Agrax Earthshade and finally drybrushed Buff over the top. The rails were painted in gun metal, the sleepers in Flat Brown and washed in Nuln Oil. Finally the tops of the tracks were painted in Mithril Silver. If you look at real rail tracks you'll see that the top is shiny clean where the wheels have rubbed off the dirt.  

The resin casts are very nice and fit together perfectly, these are so good, that I quickly ordered over 6ft of them!

I also included in the order a set of oil and ammo supplies, which can be used as scenery or Jumping off Points for Chain of Command. I painted half with grass bases and half with urban bases so they are a bit more usable depending on the game I'm playing. 

Whilst messing about with the rail tracks I also took another look at the really old home made lengths of mud road that I made many years ago. I've been thinking about these for a while and they are looking a little tired now:

So, I dulled them down with a bit of a drybrush with Khaki and added static grass to the edges. This allowed me to soften the edges of the corner pieces as well. 

It didn't take long, but I got all the roads that I have done in no time. 

Meanwhile, I have also been making some videos of solo wargame AARs as an example of how to go about gaming during lockdown in the UK. Have a watch of this latest one, a Square Bashing game based on the 1st of July 1916 and the first day of the Somme. Please have  watch here and subscribe, if you haven't already!