All Quiet on the Sudan Front?

There's not been much activity here for the last few weeks, and one could be forgiven for thinking that a lack of reports meant a lack of activity at the front. Nothing could be further from the truth! In the last four weeks we have fostered a dog (who wrecked the house), found a new home for the now ex-foster dog, got a couple of kittens, attended Warfare and Reveille (or which more later) and had the games room invaded by Laura and her friends.  The games room currently looks like this:

Now, the eagle-eyed  amongst you will have noticed  a few things here. The first is the appearance of a pile of 20mm WW2 desert armour. Laura and Philip are developing a  healthy interest in wargaming and WW2 20m Western desert is their chosen starting point. We picked up some Armourfast PzIIIs, Crusaders and Shermans at Warfare, and Laura splurged on some more kits at Reveille last week.  The Armourfast kits will will no prizes for extreme accuracy but they do build up very quickly into some excellent and attractive models. I just wish they'd been available when i was heavily into this kind of wargaming several decades back!

Out of interest, Dad has also been directed to raise a WW2 "army", but in my case is is made up of British WW2 North West Europe kit - Sherman Fireflys and M10 Achilles, and some Priest Kangaroos coming later. Don't ask how these three armies can come together - they just can :)

Tucked away at the back are some Wings of War Series IV models. I'm working on a couple of repaints there at the moment, as well as plucking up the courage to begin the Skytrex HP 0/100 I bought at Warfare!

Another feature that the observant reader will have noticed is the appearance of some railway wagons, track and a locomotive. Fear not, I have not been drawn into the world of model railways! Over the last few weks I've been hunting down track and rolling stock in TT gauge on which to base a Sudan armoured train. I now have all the kit I need, and so this project is about to get underway. I've widened the scope a bit so I will also be looking to use some of the less Sudan-specific kit for my 15mm Spanish Civil War stuff (which in any case is in danger of morphing into a hypothetical Central/South American civil war setting, after seeing some of the fun that the Abbey Wood Irregular are having with their 28mm "Very British Civil War" games - I will be adding a small armoured steamroller to my armies soon!). Anyway, more on the developing Sudan train in future press releases.

Finally, just to reassure you that the Sudan has not been forgotten, I have been working on the logistics side of my collection. the rules I'm drafting take account (in a simple way) of food, water and ammunition, and as a result I need a baggage train. I have plenty of camels and mules carrying, crates, boxes and other nondescript items, but I really needed some water wagons. There is a well-known photo of British 2 wheel wagons near the Pyramids in the 1890s and I wanted something similar. After a call on TMP for suggestions I picked up three wagons from Museum Miniatures.

They are lovely models and paint up quite nicely. In this case a simple overcoat of a medium tan, followed by a wash using the Army Painter mid-range wash. Here they are at the core of my loggie train, along with some Peter Pig baggage camels and a packed screw gun battery.

So, next up (once the school Christmas Fair is out of the way) will be the start of work on the train. I will keep you posted!

And finally, a gratuitous kitten shot!