Warhammer 40k Armoured Train Build

This is a project that I've had at the back of my mind for a long time. Actually, the seeds were sown years ago when my brother attended a gaming event where our local game store Marquee Models in Harlow (UK) had a land train game set up with ork vehicles that were jumping onto the train to attack it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I got the idea of a warhammer train and it stuck - bubbling away back there for decades.

Recently, I've been working on my Steel Legion and the train idea resurfaced. A quick Google search revealed that some people had been able to make one successfully. A while back, I'd looked at actual scale train kits, but they were prohibitively expensive. I was basically looking for something to be used in scenarios - budget was definitely limited for this project!

A bit of Internet searching revealed this thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/769594.page?userfilterid=122875 - which featured a great train built from something called a "Caterpillar Construction Set"... I looked it up on eBay and got a used one a few days later for a grand total of £10 plus postage. If you look at the thread on Dakka Dakka, it was a really involved build. I wanted to do something more simple with a focus on look and playable area. The running boards for the train were a brilliant idea  so I took that idea and sort of ran with it to increase the playable area. The train itself is perfectly in scale, but as a dodgy plastic toy, I had a lot to do. The first things to work o  was the windows at the front as the front is always the place people look first!

I also bought a bunch of plasticard bits to make railings and details with. The photo above shows how the basic shape for the running boards was constructed. I decided to make a freight type looking train and not to add guns so that it wouldn't be so much a fighting piece as a transport. I also looted my bits box for parts. I really didn't want to add hundreds of rivets to the thing, but handily, I had a bunch of flat plastic Warlord Games bases that already had a gripping side that looked like rivets, so I used those with some plasticard used to cover where it said Warlord Games in the middle of each one! 

For the 3 carriages, I have one small (in this photo red) tank which was actually an ore cart looking thing I flipped over and built a gantry on. The passenger car is next which has large playing areas added. Of all the carriages, it was the most unstable, so low armour skirting was added which is also some sort of anti roll device to stop it tipping too far on the table. After that in the distance is a mostly flat tank carrying platform which should hold 2 Chimera size tanks, although I haven't tried to size it since adding the hand rail section to the rear. There is a bunch of cheap ass looking plastic track sections too I am going to paint as well. They would actually look really good if based up, but as I don't have room to literally build a permanent train board, the flexibility of being able to lay them as is has to be king. 

All in all, I spent about a week building the Steel Legion train. I guess I need to name it now - and paint the thing. I finished 3 carriages in total plus the train, and there was a one more carriage in the set I can do at a later date along with a bunch of track.

It took quite a lot of spray to get down a decent coat of white to start working over the top of. It was fun to roughly array it once it was looking like more of a united colour. For me, the balance came out just about right- a lot of the otig9nal kit is visible still, but up-detailed and the running boards are a very usable size. 

The photo above shows the passenger carriage from the rear. I added a raised gantry with control panel to the back - the ladder on this one was already part of the kit, so that helped and saved me a bit of time. Work on  the whole train was slow in the beginning, but once I got going and had basic shapes in place it came together pretty quickly.

Pictured above is the big transport carriage which I did test later on after writing some of the text earlier and found that it will still hold 2 chimera hull tanks or similar size. Actually this was one of the more difficult carriages as it had a number of lumpy plastic details that I had to remove which was one of those jobs that could only be done with clippers and a lot of time. I did most of it while watching TV in the end.

Now that it's undercoated, it looks almost ready to cross the Ash wastes! Story wise I envisage it crossing the big stretches of Armageddon between Armageddon Prime and Secondus or the hives themselves. Hopefully, I will have time to update once I have had the chance to pit some paint on it. 

Steel Legion Imperial Bombard

 

This model has been on my painting radar for far too long. I always wanted a Colossus back when they first appeared in the guard codex - I think it was 5th Edition? - anyway, they never did make a proper model. At the time, I had high hopes for a joint plastic kit with the Medusa at some stage, but it never happened. 

Fast forward several years to about 2018 when I started the Steel Legion force out of the ashes of a few failed past armies, and one of the things I knew I wanted was one of the Forgeworld Bombards. It was actually sprayed in a batch with my first Basilisk and then sort of ended up hanging around. I changed projects and it just never seemed to get finished until now. It also didn't help that somewhere in the middle it took some sort of knock during a house move that caused it to fall apart a bit.

Anyway, the tank uses my standard Steel Legion Scheme - there is a full tutorial on here somewhere, so there's not much point in recounting all the colours. It's easily found on Google under "how to paint Steel Legion tanks" if anyone is interested. 

One factor that slowed my progress on this thing was deciding what to actually do with the mortar itself. Originally the dark grey body was camouflage like the tank's hull, but it just didn't work and looked a bit too murky. The red stripes help add an accent of colour to it too. 

And that about rounds it out for this thing. I really should post more often!

Armageddon Steel Legion Stormtroopers

A few photos to share today of the Stormtrooper squad I recently finished. I've never really been a fan of when they became "Scions" in later editions, and for Steel Legion, I always think of Stormtroopers like they used to be. The original metal models they made are long out of print, and although I hope to get hold of some one day,  I'm rather happy with this unit.

These guys are actually 3D prints. I'm not much into 3D printing and don't have the equipment myself, so I can't comment on how or why these came out so nicely - I just picked what I wanted, stuck them together and painted them. I really like the old style masks though. Design wise, they take quite a lot in terms of heads and guns from the old metals, but the armour is quite different and falls somewhere between the older models and the more recent Scions. 

I tried to emulate the older scheme which was quite heavy on the yellow - in the end, I had to pick out the trousers with black though as too much yellow didn't really seem to be working! Either way, it's pretty much a reversal of my original Steel Legion scheme where the yellow of the jackets is used for the armour and other colours remain pretty much unchanged. I used some additional Scion parts for the build and the arms of the sergeant and vox trooper are both just the Scion plastic bits. 

I've been working on a lot of other units recently, so may post some more if I find the time. I've been away for so long, there's probably more painted models in my collection now that should have been posted to the blog years ago than I ever got around to posting in the first place! 

 

Steel Legion Infantry Squad 2

Another infantry squad completed. I actually finished this one a few months ago, but as the blog is behind, and as basic squads aren't that exciting, they've been a bit delayed. In the army, I have 4 fully painted squads of basic infantry, 2 with just lasguns, and another 2 fitted with special and heavy weapons. This one has an Autocannon and Plasma Gun - a pretty time honoured armament. 

But wait, that's not a Krieg weapon team I hear you cry (insert deafening sounds of silence and images of slowly rolling tumbleweed here....). I'm too cheap for that, so this one was built out of an old leftover Cadian heavy weapon team. The sitting legs were spare Anvil parts I had. I think the arms for the guy with the binoculars were part of a tank commander. The other conversion in the squad is their sergeant.

Speaking of tank commanders, he uses bits from a plastic tank commander; either from a Baneblade or Hellhound kit - I'm not sure. Anyway, that's where I got his arms and head from. 

I could probably have taken better pictures of these guys, but it's what I've got, so it'll do. I think there are some better photos of my other squad, so look at those if you want to see them clearer!

And that's pretty much it for Steel Legion for now. I've started work on some other stuff though, so stay tuned for that. Dreadtober is on the horizon too, so I'll be plugging on with that soon enough.

Steel Legion Valkyrie Conversion (Revell 1:48 Hind Helicopter Kit)

Something a bit different today. A few weeks ago, I was watching the A-Team (which is full of Helicopters), and I got to thinking how cool it would be to have one for my Steel Legion. Then around the same time, I played a bit of Red Alert on the old PS1 multi-tap. Needless to say, I played as Soviets (because that is probably the last balanced game ever), and I started building Hind Helicopters. It got me thinking how cool they are, and throw in a little Metal Gear nostalgia and this was pretty much the end result.

I should probably explain that there's a reason I took photos outside. One was for the cool "sky" shots, but the other was that this thing is just too big to fit in my regular set-up.

Build wise, I used a Revell 1:48 scale Hind kit. The 1:48 scale is quite close to 28mm. In face, I was able to use the pilots bodies as they were close enough in scale. It was an odd kit to build though, and my first foray into anything "historical" or real. Basically, the build involved getting half the fuselage and adding all the interior detail to it (including internal chambers and cockpit etc and then sandwiching it with thee other half. It sounds fine till you actually try to get that to fit. I'd read a bit online about people shaving various bits down to get it to fit, but it's actually completely unnecessary. About half a dozen elastic bands stretched round the fuselage as it dried ensured a good fit, and in the end no filling or anything was needed.

As far as conversion goes, I replaced the guns with some tank and Sentinel bits. I also added a crewman made from a few spare Anvil parts, and did a similar conversion (head swap and shoulder armour) for the two pilots. The flight base is from TT combat. I used an engraving tool to cut an "X" shape into the helicopter so it sits inside and is nice and snug. Painting was fine - a bit long winded because of how big it is, but nothing to report on really. I followed my usual tank scheme (there a tutorial for it here)

That's about it then. I think I still have another Steel Legion post to go... but I'm starting to lose track.

I also edited this picture to make it look like a battle scene - consider it a bonus!

Steel Legion Mortar Teams (Anvil Industry Heavy Weapons)

More Steel Legion today - this time is my freshly finished mortar teams. I've had these guys for a while, but they were always lower down on my list of priorities. After adding up a few potential army lists, I realised that they'd be useful to have as an add on unit to fill those gaps where I was left with thirty or so points to spend.

They're pretty much 100% Anvil parts, so nothing to report on that front. Anvil supply heavy weapons teams with smaller bases than the GW ones; which means that you have the second crewmen on individual bases. I think I'd prefer a 60mm round base, but it does make marking wounds easier.

Style-wise, they match the rest of the army. Most of my guys are styled with very busy bases like they're in the thick of combat. I went with calmer more plain bases for the mortars as I envisage them always being out the back of the force providing support.

Converted Steel Legion Tech-Priest Enginseer

This Tech-Priest was a bits box built freebie. I wanted him to look a little bit ramshackle and less-preferred by the Mechanicus. The kind of guy who would run some type of tank junkheap and get annexed to an armoured column aas he was the best of what was left!

I've always got plenty of stuff about the place from years of building and collecting. The biggest part of this guy is a Renegade Tank Commander body from Forgeworld. I've had the part for a while, but had never done anything with it. It actually only goes to the knees, and had no arms, so I built on top of it as a base.

I used a plastic pair of legs from a different tank commander to get him on his feet. After that, A pair of Scion arms and a Heresy resin power axe with a brass rod haft brought the look together.

His backpack was cut off of a Kreig vox caster (who I had converted to have a cloak in my sniper unit, so I was cutting it off anyway) - the robot arm is an upside-down Necron arm with a bit of a Dark Eldar Scissorhand attached. Yep, he's made of bits from pretty much everything! Oh, and his crotch-plate is part of an Onager Dunecrawler.

Anyway, he's ready for battle now, and painted up to match the rest of the force. Fixing vehicles is pretty good in this edition of the game and as a cheap choice, I'm sure I'll get plenty of use out of him.

Steel Legion Stormtroopers - Militarum Tempestus Scions

Another Steel Legion post today - just showing my recently completed unit of Stormtroopers. You kind of have to call them Stormtroopers for Steel Legion as they pre-date all of that Militarum Tempestus stuff, and that's how they're referred to in the books too.

I enjoyed painting these guys a lot too as they're a little bit different from my usual infantry models. They really came alive when I did the blue details too - like all the pipes and stuff. I tried to make the screens on their wrists look like some kind of bio-readout monitor thing, so I did a heart-beat shaped thing on each one. Equally though, it could be some kind of vox signal (or maybe Codec like in Metal Gear?)

At some point, I'll have to get another 5 so I can have a full unit. For the moment, there's no rush as they're not in any of my planned lists, and I've got so many other units to finish that I can't justify buying anything new. My Steel Legion have become a bit of a dumping ground for older guard army projects - these guys were originally earmarked for my now defunct Traitor Guard force, so they were basically free as I had them laying about the place anyway. The upside and downside is that I have tons of tanks to paint up too!

More Steel Legion tomorrow....