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Well folks, here's the start of a very ambitious project for 2012. I'm planning on making this a 6-7 car hijacked Imperial armored train. It will be owned by my traitor guardsmen and used for a few scenario games this year. Here are a few pictures of the first car's progress.
The fluff is that this plasma powered armored train was hijacked by a group of penal legion troopers during an escape from an Imperial stronghold yet to be named. (which is also being built)

all night long!

looks promising

As this train progresses, I am further developing the scenario rules. I would like to share what a buddy of mine and I have come up with thus far.
This train was captured when Chaos Sorcerers possessed the warden of an Imperial brig located in the center of an Imperial fortress. In conjunction with the release of all the penal legion prisoners, there was a simultaneous daemon assault on multiple fronts in the fortress. The train was able to be boarded by the majority of the escapees and began its journey off the map. The fortress happens to have a Titan manufactorum with a nearly finished Imperial Titan attached to the build scaffolds. The Imperial fortress is also armed with several armored vehicles, various armament and a valkyre squadron.
The Titan may not move or shoot at all during turn one due to the need to power up its void shields and propulsion system. The train, however, IS allowed to fire on turn one. It would be wise of the army commander to target the Titan before its dual Turbo Lasers ignite the armored train. The train will be armed with several baneblade weapons. Furthermore, the final train car will be loaded with a Basilisk Battery. There will be a special rule "detach" which will allow players to detach the last car to use as a stationary firing platform. This will make the Titan commander decide which target gets priority fire and potentially buy the escaping train some time to get off the map.
The train may be boarded by airborne troop types. Should the train be wiped clean of chaos penal legion troopers, the Imperium wins. Should the train exit the map within five turns, Chaos wins.

Please feel free to add or subtract to these rough ideas above and post some comments to let me know. Your help is much obliged!

Well, here are some pics on the progress for a double arch span bridge that I am currently building to cross a rather deep/large ravine on the game board that we are working on for this project. This has been so fun, I had to share the pictures early!
Enjoy:

The arches were created using vacuum forming plastic. I just heated it up in the oven and let it conform to the simple green jug. Once it had cooled, I used some spray foam to secure it to the foam spans. Leaving the jug in place helped keep the arch exactly where I wanted it.

Once the arch was set, I begain gluing my home made bricks down using PVA glue. In total, I think in the two arches, I have used over 850 foam bricks. This is no small task, but once you get some kind of rythm, it tends to go pretty quickly.

This is just sort of a preview that will show you how this should look when completed. Use your immaginations though, as it is VERY WIP!

This is a shot of the first stage of painting on the brickwork. For more info on how to mortar the bricks, click the link in my sig and have a look at my blog.

Last is a shot after a light yellow wash using the APJ parchment wash recipe.

Hope you enjoyed this!

Awesome, cannot wait to see how this progresses!

Looking good, should be most impressive!

First off, I am a ironworker by trade and I would never want to cross that bridge

Awsome project log. This looks freaking amazing, I love scenero games, they just bring so much more to the 40k universe. Nice fluff so far. Are we going to see some Titan pens/silo's? Thats one thing I have always wanted to build is a Titan Silo with the scaffolding around it and Tech-priests with servitors repairing and blessing the God Machine.

That would be amazing and I would love to see your take on it. Your train looks good so far. This project has so much potential.

Well, while you mention it, I would not want to cross a foam bridge either! LOL
I do like the thought of a silo defense system and I shall see what I can do with it!
Thanks for the input

Did he ever return,
no he never returned
and his fate is still unknown
he may ride forever
o'er the bridges of Bastion
he's a renegade who never returned

lookin great, cant wait to see it finished

You're a bad, bad man. Awesome idea.

Here are some progress shots on the Viaduct. Lots of time spent cutting and chamfering bricks and keystones. Anyways, that is all for now.


This is a picture of how I actually make the bricks. I start with pre-cut lengths of styrene, cut on the band saw. Then I built a jig around the pre-cut lengths and taped down a stop at the desired height of the bricks. After that, a quick slice with a brand new razor blade and a light push out of the way, and VIOLA, we have a pile of bricks in about a half an hour. The most time consuming part was actually pre-cutting the styrene into desired width strips. Anyway, give it a shot!

Wouldnt it just be easier to get a thin sheet of styrene, cut it to shape, and then score it in a brick pattern with a hobby knife(and a ruler to keep your lines straight)?

pretty cool Idea, I want one so bad. I might have to steal the idea of an armoured train.

I can't tell you how awesome I think this is. First is that it is a cool scratch build, I love cool scratch terrain, and it will actually be used in scenario games. I wish I had a gaming group that awesome. I can't comment on your rules, but I've always felt that this is the heart of the game, maybe it's a bit dated of me to still like the Rogue Trader spirit of the game. I'm generally envious of train modeling layouts, I think the best would be to have a huge custom board that could run big games. Looks awesome. Brick work is always tedious, but it pays off.

chaos0xomega wrote:Wouldnt it just be easier to get a thin sheet of styrene, cut it to shape, and then score it in a brick pattern with a hobby knife(and a ruler to keep your lines straight)?

I'm obviously not going for easy here. This is a total scratch build and I like the minute differences in each stone that is being cut out. If I wanted easy, I'd slap some lines on it and call it done like 99% of the hobbyists out there already do. I'm a custom terrain builder, and custom it shall be.

This is looking awesome you planning to get the train to work?

Llamahead wrote:This is looking awesome you planning to get the train to work?

"MAYBE"

Subscribed!

Dunno how much they go for but there was a similar amazing project with a Dora cannon for 40k and they settled on using lego track which would make motorising it fairly easy.

TTG BUNKER wrote:

Llamahead wrote:This is looking awesome you planning to get the train to work?

"MAYBE"

As soon as you posted that my interest doubled!!!!

Great work! I've always had a little idea in the back of my mind about a train system ever since I saw that Landraider train in the Apoc book. I'm glad someone had the cojones to go for it

th3maninblak wrote:You're a bad, bad man.

FabricatorGeneralMike wrote:
Awsome project log. This looks freaking amazing, I love scenero games, they just bring so much more to the 40k universe.

I agree on both counts!

TTG BUNKER wrote:I'm a custom terrain builder, and custom it shall be.

Touche

Thanks for all the lovely comments. I am getting a little more interest in a train project than I originally thought, so I'll also document how I'm building the train cars and tying them all together. Also I have a neat use for this Tamiya gearbox and a couple of motors.... Hmmm. Anyways, thanks so much for all the fine praise. Much obliged!

I have been thinking of making a sweet display of a Guard armored train being attacked by speed freaks well the army was in transit.


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My plan called for having some of the tanks in transit fighting off the attackers cant wait to see what you do with one.