Mean Streets: The Warriors & More (EL Details)

[Cat]

So, I started working on the Plasticville buildings for throw down terrain for Coney Island smaller games while we had the down time waiting for new printers to arrive.  The summoning spell worked — new printers are here and humming away now.
 
I'll do a bit more work on the in-progress Plasticvilles before setting them aside to focus on the main board.  Very happy with the way these can be Coney-fied with some roll down shutters.  Any rumbles on the boardwalk happen after hours, or before hours in the early morning light, when everything is shuttered tight.
 
The Plasticville Motels make great rows of boardwalk concessions.  The Post Office will be a Skee Roll Arcade.
 
Today's grand acquisition is all the parts for 4' of elevated track with two sets of three cars.  Some assembly required...  The track structure will be the most labour intensive part of the board.  There will also be scratchbuilding of platforms and a control house that slings under the track.
 
The buildings, currently being printed, are very simple assemblies — trim flash, glue floors and roof together and paint.  But there will be a bunch of them for a 4' x 6' Brooklyn board.  I delivered 5 more spools of PLA while picking the trains up to keep the printers fed.
 
All the STL files are from Corvus Games Terrain, printed at 82% to bring the train cars in at 1/64 scale.
 

[Cat]

With the El parts now in hand, and buildings rolling off the printers, it's pretty safe to say I'll be running games at Huzzah! in Portland Maine, 17–19 May.
 
Great people, great venue, right by the Portland International Jetport.  Bonus inspiration that this year's theme is Hollywood.  Hotel block just opened, I'll be making my reservation tomorrow.
: 3
 
https://mhwa.info/huzzahcon/

[mikedemana]

Wow, SOOOO close to me being able to attend. I'll still be in school, then. Plus, I think that is the weekend of a Toledo convention I go to every year. Good luck!

The elevated train looks like it will be amazing. Can't wait to see that and the Coney Island scenery... 

Mike Demana

[Andy in Germany]

I'm really looking forward to that elevated railway.

[CapnJim]

Great progress here.  Looking forward to more.

And Mike, yeah.  I'm pretty sure that's the weekend of Drums...

[Cat]

Games are officially submitted and accepted for Huzzah! Con, May 17–19 in Portland, Maine.  I'll be running session on Saturday morning and afternoon.  Great people, great venue, right by the Portland Jet Port if anyone wants to travel to a great con:
https://mhwa.info/huzzahcon/
 
Now to finish getting through the stacks of cartons of 3D printed terrain...
 
A friend has been coming over and she's been helping with the prep work, and we'll eventually shift to painting.  The pile of track and girders for the elevated are all trimmed but still need a fair amount of analogue modifications.  We've started on prepping the first carton of buildings, which trim up much quicker than all the girders.  I'm puttying the seam in the train cars now and will soon be able to spray paint
 
I may or may not have work time to finish the subway extension in time for Huzzah, but all the parts will be in hand soon.  I got the first batch of them this week, which allowed me to do a dry fitting and calculate what all would be needed to add an upper mezzanine level  Rest of the subway and mezzanine parts will be in the final carton.
 
For bonus points, the convention theme this year is Hollywood, so this will be one of the themiest games!
: 3
 

[Michi]

Oh, I'm so envious! 
There are some awesome terrain bits on your table, although the subway looks rather like London Tube rolling stock than NYC carriages. May I ask from where you got the STLs for those?

[Cat]

All the STLs are from Corvus Game Terrain's Urban range.  It's the only subway set on the market, so at least I'm not doing scale model railroading with this project.  I did have the cars (and most everything) printed at 82% of standard file size and that does bring the cars in at 1/64 scale length of NYC trains to match the diecast cars on the street below.
 
The sides of NYC stock isn't fluted like this, they are a nice smooth canvas for the  street artists to work on.  But once the gangs deck these trains out in full 1979 NYC livery, they will fit in nicely.
 : 3

Designer's in Ireland and just went for a generic train.
https://corvusgamesterrain.com/collections/modern-urban-post-apocalyptic

[Michi]

All the STLs are from Corvus Game Terrain's Urban range.  It's the only subway set on the market, so at least I'm not doing scale model railroading with this project.  I did have the cars (and most everything) printed at 82% of standard file size and that does bring the cars in at 1/64 scale length of NYC trains to match the diecast cars on the street below.

Thank you very much! I'm also using 1/64th scale diecast vehicles as road dressing along with 28mm miniatures on my gaming table, therefore a good hint to scale the files down to 82%. Many moons ago, I bough H0 gauge NYC subway carriages to convert them to S scale, but that never happened...  Now I see an alternative!

[Cat]

Overall, I love the Corvus designs.  There are a few quirks in the train platforms that benefit from remedial work.  Mind the gap, and make a dex roll!  The gap twixt platform edge and car doors would eat small children and wheelchairs.
 
I'll be adding a filler strip on the subway platforms.  The Elevated platform piece is not designed to be extendable, and so I'm kludging the print scaling of subway platform parts to make a better elevated one.  Printing the platform support narrower on the X axis to glue up against the track piece (X at 44.74%), and printing the platform deck wider than that to overhang the killer gap (X at 63.24%), Y & Z at 82%.  I'll have to cut a hole in the platform deck for the stairway to come up through since I'm not connecting it at the platform end.

At 82%, the track gauge comes in a little wide, but the car dimensions are perfect for 1/64.  And figures on bases look fine next to the doors; folks over 6' tall have to watch their heads on NYC trains!

[mikedemana]

Your attention to scale and detail is amazing...this is going to look stupendous when it is done! 

Mike Demana

[Michi]

folks over 6' tall have to watch their heads on NYC trains!

I did, but also did in London - so you must have matched the scale perfectly! 

[Cat]

Meditating on the car side, I think I'm going to try filling in the fluting with gesso.  Try a little experiment area first.  If it comes out semi-decently, that will make painting the graffiti a whole lot easier.

[Cat]

Rattle can and masking tape level of getting the base colours on the first big batch of 10 buildings is done.  Brushwork for touch-ups, detailing, and weathering to follow.  Prep for the next batch is well underway.
 
These 10 cover the light industrial area and a start on the restaurants/shops.  More of them to follow, and then houses.
 
Total will be 40 buildings so the board will look like a slice of New York.  2 have already been completed a few months back.  Fortunately the 3D prints paint up quick, and 38 of them are printed.  (The Texaco was a stock pre-coloured building, and the control house to be slung under the tracks across Broadway Junction Station will be scratchbuilt from styrene.)
 
My friend who took on the printing did quite the Herculean task.  I knew this was going to be a big project.  I severely misunderestimated!  I'll be picking up the final carton of prints today.
 
Grand tally is 21.5 spools/kilos of PLA.  2 months of non-stop printing with 4 printers, ~ 1280 printing hours.  Totals do include a significant misprint and re-do — Scott mistakenly printed (16) sections of double-track elevated track pieces (~7-1/2 linear feet!) that should have been single-track subway track pieces, whoops.  (Michi, if you'll be wanting some track, let me know.)
 
Whee!
 

[Andy in Germany]

For some reason I hadn't realised how many models you were preparing. I'm impressed by the the sheer volume of items, and as other have said, that you still manage such a high attention to detail.