Industrial Wild West Part 4 - Track and Carts

The main attraction of this set has to be the Mine Carts and Track. These are the pieces that shout "Industry" here. I didn't expect them to take quite so long however...(hence the delay in update)

There are quite a few track pieces included in the kit split up in the ground boards and separate rails to go on top. The wooden sections were painted just as the Mine Entrances. I flipped over a couple of the tight turns to make sure that all my tracks didn't have to turn to the left.

I only put the final "sandy" dry brush on the outside of the tracks to leave a darker, "well trod" section down the middle.

The rails were seperately painted black and brushed with gunbolt metal before being glued to the bases.

Once dry I gave the rails a weak wash of rust and a light drybrush of chainmail. These tracks will be in use, so not completely rusted over.

The cart pieces are over quite a few sheets, so I thought it more useful to lay the required components out as above.

The carts go together nicely, but it takes a couple of drying time breaks to allow the undercarraige and the wheels to become attached. The wheels are just flat surfaces gluing onto the assembly so its best to have the cart on its side and attach one side then, once dry, the other.

I also decided to sand down the lips the cart side.

I've read many times in painting articles how painters use salt crystals to add a chipped paint effect to their vehicles, etc. This seemed like a good opportunity to try it out for myself. The carts were undercoated brown and then gunbolt metal. They were then sprayed with hair spray, sea salt crystals stuck on, and another covering of the hair spray (i found the crystals fell off without this second spray).

The carts were then painted using the same 3 base colour technique as the office building and a weak brown wash. I used yellow as the base to match in with the building. Once all that wash dry I brushed off the salt crystals to expose the metal surface underneath.

I then mixed up some weak rust mix, dotted it under the chipped areas and smudged it down the cart side with my finger. Sometimes a couple of applications looked best. I also did this on the cart rims and gave a dry brush of chainmail for recently exposed areas.

The final touch was some white glue soaked tissue paper in the bottoms of the carts and glue over that a couple of layers of Javis Coal scatter that I had. This was given a quick dry brush of brown (we're not mining coal)

Not that I have a picture of it, but for those that are curious the cart wheels snugly straddle the rails so they won't be falling off during gaming.