Old Glory recently released this resin 2′ long 28mm scale Tramp Steamer for $195usd (excluding shipping). The price started a conversation over on the Back of Beyond Pulp Forum about scratch building your own tramp steamers for considerably less cost. That resulted in a friendly competition to scratch build our own tramp steamers, sponsored by Rattrap Productions. Of course I had to put my hand up to join in!

So this weekend I spent some time planning, cutting and gluing bits of foam card together. As well as examining my collection of Tintin books for inspiration as Tintin and Captain Haddock seem to spend a fair amount of time commandeering or being held prisoner on tramp steamers of various flavours.

In the end I decided to use the ‘Sirius’ from ‘Red Rackham’s Treasure’ as a pattern for my steamer. Mainly because it’s a small vessel and is simply rendered by Herge so I can concentrate on creating it in 28mm scale without worrying too much about the details. Plus it has a unique 30’s curved wheel house and walkway which I liked the look of, although up reflection it’ll probably be quite interesting to scratch build.

I’m trying to get the basic superstructure out of the way as soon as possible to keep me motivated. Then I’ll spend some time building the cabins/wheelhouse/cargo cranes and detailing the deck.

Here’s what I have constructed so far from 5mm foam board, 3mm balsa wood decking and 2mm card for the hull sides. Dress makers pins hold it all together while the PVA dries and have the added bonus of looking like rivets.

The bow and forecastle are going to be interesting to construct due to their reasonably complex shape and while I’ve created a hole down to the hold I’ll probably just build a cover over the top of that and be done with it.

Another three figures moved off the paint station! This time more of the Cairo crowd of beggars and street vendors.

They’re a pretty motley bunch and frankly they were speed painted. More astute visitors may spot that several of them appear to be missing their eyeballs. That’s simply because I couldn’t be bother painting them on as these gentlemen will always be second rate characters in any Pulp games we play. Not to mention the fact the ragged chap on the left looks like he could be blind anyway.

The vendor on the right is an interesting figure. I’m not sure what he’s supposed to be selling. Quills of cinnamon bark? expired celery? camel jerky? Whatever it is, he doesn’t look too thrilled to be hawking it in the noon-day sun.

The central swami figure is easily my favourite of these three, mainly because he has a well sculpted face and his seated pose nicely suggests some kind of seer or fortune teller. I also enjoyed painting his folded turban, cloak and robes so his is basically the best paint job of the three.

My paint station is starting to look positively bare and in terms of painting I think it might finally be time to knock that Ebob Opel Blitz on the head!

Having sculpted, molded and resin cast my luggage pieces I have finally applied paint to several sets of them. Here they are arranged with my usual Pulp figures and Crescent Root buildings.

I imagine Herr Doktor has recently arrived with his crated laboratory supplies and personal luggage, and is suggesting the Unterscharfuehrer move it inside out of the dust. The hatbox and parcel tied with twine contain gifts for his mistress in Cairo of course.

I thoroughly enjoyed painting these pieces, which is odd because there’s almost nothing to them. I think the red carpet bag and brown leather Doctor’s bag turned out very nicely, as did the middle brown suitcase. Although somehow I ended painting the suitcase to the left a little too close to flesh tone and it looks strange to me. Mind you who’s to say a Pulp Nazi Doktor of the Occult wouldn’t sport luggage made from what looks suspiciously like human skin?

The pieces are of course quite small and very light being cast in resin, so may be a touch fiddly to game with. I suspect the best option might be to blu-tack them down to figure bases for the ‘Luggage, Lost’ scenario I hope to play soon, providing I can get some of my gaming buddies together!

I’ve had enough Pulp for a while, so may move my focus to one of my other many outstanding sculpting projects, the second 15mm scale building facade. I’ve actually made a fair bit of progress on it already and it sits at about 40% complete, I’ve just got bogged down in mastering some detail pieces for the vertical columns and decorative trim…

I’m still working to clear outstanding bits and pieces off my paint table. Since I started playing Flames of War I’ve owned a British portee unit with four 6pdr guns. However in the first edition of Flames of War I found them very wanting as they’re basically middling anti-tank guns on the back of incredibly flimsy transports. They never excelled in a fixed AT role, and were too brittle to actually use as portees…particularly when you’re trying to hunt tanks! Consequentially they’ve gathered dust in my garage for almost exactly two years.

However with the arrival of Flames of War 2nd Edition portees gained a valuable new ‘Tip and Run’ rule which means they behave the same way most German units do with their ‘Stormtrooper’ (aka ‘Sneaky Weasel’) move. If they pass a skill test they get an additional 4″ move in the Assault phase, typically behind some nearby terrain!

This makes them considerably more useful, and as such I’m painting them up to go with the rest of my New Zealanders. I’ve painted the last two guns and teams and I’m halfway through painting up the last two portees as well. Here’s the full battery sans transports. It’s interesting to notice how much shinier the old units are, I really should go back through my army and hit everything with a dusting of Moana matt varnish.

I’ve got the scenario ready and I’ve got some pulp luggage, so here’s a test 4′x4′ Cairo layout using my Flames of War desert terrain boards, collection of painted Crescent Root Studios buildings and some printed paper tracks from Eric Hotz’s Whitewash City range.

You can spot the 2′x2′ terrain boards because my young son Callum jostled the top corner out of alignment while I was taking photos. Mind you he was busy dive bombing Cairo with a British WWII balsa glider at the time!

It’s looking good for gaming over, but lacks the claustrophobic alley feel I want, so I’m in the process of ordering some of the CRS 28mm stone walls that go with these buildings. Of course they’ll arrive some time after we kick the campaign off, but they’ll be useful in the future.

Here’s a close up of the ‘train station’ with two teams of adventurers freshly disembarked and wondering where their luggage has got to! I’ve got four more Cairo civilians and a handful of 28mm luggage to paint and I’ll be ready to play the scenario. This time I’ll also try and get some decent in-progress shots as we game too.

Tuco over on the Terragenesis forums recently posted this nifty mini-tutorial about creating 28mm scale chairs from 10mm wire mesh!

It’s one of those simple but effective hobby tips I’m fond of and I’m definitely going to try this out so I can throw a few rusty chairs around my Pulp tabletop…

After researching the cost of setting myself up for white metal casting, I resolved to go with simple resin casting instead for my Pulp luggage. I molded and cast a few rounds of luggage this weekend and I think they turned out fairly well!

Here’s the first unpainted casts placed next to the same Copplestone Castings Pulp figure. I’ve darkened the photo a little to try and show up the detail on the creme resin. There are some air bubbles here and there as you can see but no major defects, so I’ll simply do some patching with a tiny amount of green stuff prior to painting. To be honest I’m relieved to see these pieces are perfectly castable in a one-sided mold even with the moderate undercuts on some of them.

Last week I added a carpet bag to the collection, which also looks a lot like a leather doctor’s bag, so it could be used either way depending on the paint job. It has turned out very well and is probably my favourite in the set. I had a scrap of mixed green stuff left so also threw together a simple ‘brown paper package, tied up with string’ to fill a space in the mold, which is resting on top of the hat-box in the photo.

Here’s the individual casts laid out in a row. I’d also like to create a large steamer trunk and possibly another variation on the suitcase (without straps) but the initial focus was on getting these molded, cast and painted up as quickly as possible. That’s because I desperately want to use them for my second Pulp campaign, which I hope to be kicking off in a fortnight with the Luggage, Lost scenario.