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It’s been a while since I updated you on my fantasy model railroad. If you haven’t been following along, I’m a train nut, and it was actually model railroading that got me into wargaming. I got my first sheet of 4×8 plywood in the garage when I was 8 years old, so when I caught on to miniature wargaming 9, it was simple to combine the hobbies: The papier mache mountain I’d made quickly became an objective point, and the two buildings I had–scale models of a train station and a Burger King–became the home bases of my little green army men.

Anyway, all of that to say that last year I got a bug in my ear to expand my miniature skills into a series of what I’m calling art pieces and what other people would probably call nonsense. They’re a series of dioramas of Pilgrims fighting sea monsters. I did five of them, and then Boylei Hobby Time built a model railroad and I fell hard.

Jump to today and I have a fantasy model railroad. It is an N scale model train, but some of the buildings are HO scale, and some are simply kitbashed together. One is a 25mm scale model from Tabletop World. Scale doesn’t matter to me nearly as much as creating interesting scenes.

Fantasy Model Railroad: The Left Side

So the fantasy model railroad is still very much a work in progress. You can see that the ground is still bare pink foam, and that there’s a mass of white spackle that at one time held the track in place. The track had multiple issues and needed to be pulled up entirely to work correctly.

But the building is a Walthers kit, and the little Alamo figures standing atop it with cannons come from Imex. The sandworm, which you can see is in a depression that will eventually be finished with resin, is one of Nolzur’s miniatures. There is no brand loyalty when it comes to the fantasy model railroad. It’s all fair game.

The Battle in the Back

On the back side of the train layout is a very unfinished scene, but it involves a Breaka Boss on Mire-brute Troggoth, as well as a mech that has been cobbled together by the Pilgrims and features a cannon for a head. Right now it looks very marionetteish, but once I actually can glue him in place he can be posed in a more action stance.

In the foreground to the right is another monster that I’ve shown before.

Vashtorr the Arkifane Looks Down From His Tower

On the side of the fantasy train layout that is significantly more developed (though far from done), there is a tower that at one point was going to be an entire castle and then was too fiddly to put together and remained a single tower. It has been kitbashed extensively as the Pilgrims have been working on it. But do the Pilgrims take their orders from Vashtorr the Arkifane, or is he an invader?

The sad thing is that there used to be a Greater Daemon sitting on top of that tower and my damn cat got up on the fantasy model railroad and knocked him to the floor and broke him, I hate that cat.

But Who Is Vashtorr Fighting?

Vashtorr, however, is not attacking the Pilgrims. In fact he is staring down a Tyrannosaurus Rex! If you notice in the grass in front of the dinosaur, there are English knights trying to also take him down, and you know what they say: when the English fight on the side of Vashtorr… I don’t know what they say.

And Looking From the Top Down

Looking down on Vashtorr and the dinosaur because I wanted you to see that the track goes all over the place, and that Vashtorr is actually somewhat hidden behind this mammoth of a mining building (another Walthers kit).

Also, as Vashtorr was not intended to sit in that tower, he’s still on a circular base and not glued down. He was always intended to be on the fantasy model railroad, which is why that base hasn’t been…based. But just not here.

Up In the Back

At the base of the tower that came from Tabletop World is Eternus, spurring his undead steed on. This is just because I really like that model and wanted to paint him, but had no place to put him. The American Revolution soldiers who are below him, and the Pilgrims’ communication tower next to him seem a little out of scale, but okay.

And In the Bottom Corner

In the bottom corner we have some Flames of War Sherman Tanks fighting against a frog monster, who is another from Nolzur. I like this little corner because no one ever looks at it. I hope that eventually the entire fantasy model railroad will be filled with tiny little scenes like these.

Anyway, that’s it for the train layout. There’s still a ton of work to do on this thing, and at the rate I’m going it’s going to take a LONG time to ever get close to done. Even though this is a small layout. I’m totally loving it, though, and the journey is half the fun.