Two Blogs Entries in Two Days!

I don't think that I have done two blog entries over a period of two days for a very long time!

The last four months
I have been working away from home and only getting one weekend a month to go back.  Since I was originally told that I would be here for six weeks, I really didn’t bring much with me, so that is part of the reason why it has been very quite on my front.  But a while back you might remember me talking about working on some Metcalfe buildings while at the staying in the hotel.  Well, I am back at it again.  The last time I home, I brought back another three kits with me:  two more row houses and a low relief of row houses.  Sunday I was jazzing to the beats of Yoko Kanno & The Seatbelts’ soundtrack albums to Cowboy Bebop (the best anime series ever in my opinion!) and cutting and gluing the kits together.  I just got over the big huddle of gluing on all of the windows and the strips for gluing the curtains onto to give them some depth.  I cut out all of the curtains pieces, but have not finished gluing all of them on yet, hopefully I will finish that tonight and start gluing the buildings into a box.

 If all goes well, I should finish both of the row houses kits by the end of this week.  The low relief might take me a little longer because of the depth of the cardboard backing is not that far from the windows, it might be very visible to be seen.  So, I have to play around with it first and I have an OO scale PDF from ScaleScenes.com (Link) which has wall paper and other stuff that I might need to glue on the backing or I could just paint it black (cue the Rolling Stones!)

(Hmm, could there be some foreshadowing with this video?)

Now a question for my British readers, these kits come with optional bay windows and dormer windows, just how common are these on row houses?  I plan to have some without either and some with both, but I am also wondering would some have bay window, but not dormers, and vice versa.  Would it be common to have some bay windows and not have bay windows on the same street?  I would appreciate any help on those questions.

When I get all three kits done, I will take a couple pictures to post along with the other three buildings that I got finished here.  Also with what I got complete back home, this will give me a total of 8 row houses, 2 low relief row houses, and 1 corner store from Metcalfe for the UK suburban game board.   That should be all that I need of those, but maybe another corner store.  Now it will be working on the industrial / commercial buildings from Metcalfe and eventually more buildings from ScaleScenes.com (more residential buildings, three or more stories flats, plus industrial / commercial buildings) and the ones I got from Tony from the Willows (sadly, not available anymore).

Next, I got to start getting back on redoing my suburban board for the “Anarchy in the UK” project.  I am nixing my past attempt (Link) and going to just do a metal road surface across the whole 3’x2’ surface and not worry about road markings.  This way I can change up the buildings and roads.  I will print out some zebra strip crossings on paper and stick them partially under opposite buildings if I want them to be designated for a game.  Grassy lots can be done with cutting up a sheet of Woodland Scenics’ ‘Readygrass’ vinyl mat project sheets.  A plan has been devised and now only waits its execution.  I need to start buying OO scale cars and street accessories again.

Finally, if all goes well and trying to fulfilling the foreshadowing from the Rolling Stones' video earlier, I should be running a play test of Charlie Don’t Surf soon.  This will be the first time I ran CDS and the first time in a many of months since running a TFL game, so that is the reason for calling it a play test.  I will try to remember to take a lot of photos and get a post game AAR afterwards.

Until then, be seeing you

Sapper