Necromunda Freight Hub: Freight Train

All aboard! I forgot to share pictures of the completed freight train for the freight hub table. As many of you know, most of my Necromunda terrain was inspired by Ironhands' work and, ever since he posted his excellent converted train, I wanted my own.

This is made (almost) entirely of old O-gauge Lionel cars that I received via Facebook train sale groups or Ebay lots. In addition to gaming, I'm also a model railroad fan, so I've amassed a pretty good selection of O-gauge trains over the years. As more model railroad fans upgrade their tracks to the more realistic tracks with plastic ballast bases, these old 3-rail tracks continue to drop in price, usually about $10-15 for a 6' oval, and the lack of ballast actually makes them fit in better with the futuristic look of science fiction games. To make them look even better, I sprayed them all over with Krylon Rust Red primer and then used sandpaper on the top of the tracks for a worn look (and to provide better electrical contact between the transformer and engine).

I held off doing any type of graffiti on these trains because I wanted this to look like the Guilders put some energy into security and didn't let taggers run amok in the freight yard.

The locomotive itself is a Ready Made Trains' "BEEP" engine, which is a super-deformed version of the eponymous GP-7 locomotive. This is an excellent engine for 28mm gaming because it's less than half the size of most realistically-proportioned O-gauge locomotives without looking diminutive next to the cars themselves. It also has an easily removable body shell that just clips on and off, so it allows you to switch between weathered, painted bodies for gaming and nice bodies for railroading (mine has a spare Chicago and Northwestern body). I painted this body using salt weathering (actually old toothpaste!) and spray paint, with decals from the old Imperial Guard transfer sheet, and weathering done in acrylics.

There was some possibility that RMT would end production last year, but it appears that they are back in business.

This was originally a Lionel gondola car with covered coil hoppers. I had it for years but never used it since I pretty much only run trains and cars consisting of midwestern US lines (it's a model railroad fan thing, you wouldn't understand). I don't use the coil covers since it makes the car look too big and then figures can't be placed inside the car, which provides a great deal of hard cover.

I painted this body using salt weathering (actually old toothpaste!) and spray paint, with decals from some old 1/48 aircraft transfer sheets, and weathering done in acrylics.

This is an old Lionel plastic flat car. This (and the tank car) are SUPER cheap because they're from the late 70s when Lionel switched most of the materials over to plastic to save on production costs. You want to search for "MPC" or "MPC-era" lots on Ebay, as these usually go for ~$3 per car.  I painted this body using Krylon Red primer spray paint, painting the wooden deck in tans and greys, with decals from some old Imperial Guard transfer sheets, and weathering done in acrylics. I added crates from the Munitorium Containers set, leaving just enough room on each side to position 2 figures with partial cover.

Another Lionel MPC "three-dome" tank car. These are actually really rare cars in reality but I love the look of them so much, I have about 4 for my model railroad. Since they were rare, they actually look much better in fictional settings. This one actually came to me missing the hatches (really common because they're just separate plastic pieces that weren't glued in well during production), so I made new ones using 25mm washes, 20mm washes, and plastic hex nut covers from IKEA. I painted this body using Krylon Red primer spray paint, with decals from some old 1/48 aircraft transfer sheets and old Imperial Guard transfer sheets, and weathering done in acrylics.