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I finished up the rest of my 4Ground western buildings. Overall I'm pretty pleased with these buildings. They have a few issues with the instructions and some of the sub-assemblies like the doors can be a bit fiddly and delicate until you get them into place. The other sub-assembly that can be a bit delicate is the balconies on Main Street Building #3 and Side Street Building #3. Because you glue the main assembly together before you glue it to the building you don't have anyway to square it up while it dries because there is only one cross support in the front. So if you wrap a rubber band around it the unsupported back section will collapse. The solution is to make a little spreader, equal to the length of the front crosspiece, from a scrap of sprue to place between the two rear uprights to keep the assembly square while the glue sets.

Also, in case you missed it, the roofs on all of these buildings are interchangeable since everything is built to the same footprint. So while the line may suffer a bit from use the same "base box" you really can mix things up on these buildings if you choose to. You can even swap levels. For instance if you could take the 2nd story from one of the Main Street buildings and use it on top of one of the Side Street Buildings or even make that second story a 1 story building on its own (although you would need to some how acquire another roof).

Once again the Female Huckster from Reaper will provide a bit of scale. She is not as tall as Black Scorpion but is a bit taller than the other lines that I have (Wargames Foundry and Dixon).

Here are the pictures, sorry a few of them are a bit out of focus.

Side Street Buildings 1, 2 and 3 (not necessarily in the right order mind you). I have left off the awnings, makes it easier to see the buildings.

Our favorite Huckster ready for a card game

I took everything down to the workroom today and took some new pictures of my On30 Locomotives. I used Reaper's Female Huckster from their Savage Worlds line for scale. She has been modified slightly, the original base has been removed and replaced with a lower profile one. All my western figures will eventually end up on this base. On to the pictures.

These are all Bachmann Spectrum engines, according to their site they are simply based on locomotives from the Baldwin company.

First up the beauty and scale shots:

2-6-0 Mogul, lettered and some what modified for the Colorado & Southern. Not sure how close this one is to an actual C&S 2-6-0.

The 4-4-0 American, unlettered, will definitely need to be painted.

The 4-6-0 Ten Wheeler, another one with a date with the paint shop

This probably gives you the best look at the difference in sizes

Another good comparison shot

Over the last couple of weeks I have managed to acquire a few more pieces for the Colorado & Northwestern Railroad that will be serving Calamity. This time I found a 4-6-0 Ten Wheeler, a type that the C&N didn't actually own but the price was just to good to pass up. I'll do some research and see if another one of the Colorado narrow gauge railroads used this type and letter it appropriately. I finally managed to acquire a combine car, its painted in burgundy so it will have a date with the paint shop for a nice coat of Pullman green. I also, accidentally, acquired another passenger/observation car also in burgundy so this one will be reserved for the railroad brass. The last purchase was a pair of flat cars. At this point I would like one or two more cattle cars and, of course, box cars. I have managed to acquire one at this point and would like at least 2-3 more and I need some short bottom dump ore cars. Taurus Products makes these but since they batch produce who knows when they will be available not that there is a pressing need for these until I actually build the On30 layout itself (separate from Calamity). I have the Taurus ore cars in HO scale so at the very least I have plans for them that I could scale up and work from. I need to dig through my railroad magazines and see if I can find the article on modifying On30 cars to ride lower to the ground.

Here are a few pictures (bad, I know, one of my lights is out and apparently I'm out of bulbs). I included a picture of the 4-4-0 American  and the 2-6-0 Mogul just to give you an idea of the size of the locomotives. Now sizes varied a lot, there were big 4-4-0s and small 4-6-0s just depended on what a railroad needed and of course when they were built. Most of the locomotives made by Bachmann seem to be post 1900 so they aren't exactly right for my 1870 town of Calamity, but they are close enough, my players certainly aren't going to care.

4-6-0 Ten Wheeler - At the very least it needs to be re-lettered for a Colorado railroad. Updated: Looks like I have a couple of options Rio Grande Southern and Denver & Rio Grande. I'm leaning towards the D&RGW for this one as it should be easy to find decals ready to go, although the RGS's scheme is a bit more interesting.

4-6-0 with the gang

4-4-0 with the gang

2-6-0 looks like this one needs another photo session so you can see the whole thing

Flat Car

Combine or Combination Car - so named as one portion was for baggage and the other for passengers

The Observation/Passenger Car - This one will be reserved for the Brass.

After successfully building Side Street Building #2 I figured I would dive right in and build one of the Main Street buildings while some of the lessons were still fresh in my mind. For my second build I grabbed Main Street Building #1 mostly because it was red and matched the Side Street building that I had just finished. I don't think much of a preamble is necessary for this one so I'll jump straight into the pictures of the build.

The package was stuffed full of these. Take them out carefully some will fall right out of the sprues. I lost a set of windows out of one of the side street buildings.

Getting the walls together

The window sequence. These are fancy but I would have preferred the fancy stuff on the top (either way is appropriate for the period).

Everything in place on the second floor.

Stacking things up for a test fit.

Working on my favorite type of roof, although its definitely getting covered with something to hide that ugly roof seam. As a point of interest all the roofs for the first DMH buildings are interchangeable, that gives you some opportunity to mix things up a bit. The other nice thing about this roof is it is not possible to get RH1 upside down. If you manage to get this triangular equivalent of RH1 I want to see pictures!

The stairs. I really like these.

Finished building with roofs in place

Roof off, showing the second floor.

Second floor off to get to the first floor. I like the way these buildings come apart. You can have action on both floors without a problem.