"Wargames on a model railway" Topic

This is a bit of a crossover question.

Does anyone on here wargame on a model railway layout ?

If so what scale railway / figures do you use, and how do you handle the compromise between figure 'scale' and railway modelling 'scale' ?

Do you have any suggestions for someone looking to try this out ?

Pete

P.S. Sorry for the misspelt title ….

I often use plastic railway building in scale HO for my Essex 15mm miniatures, perhaps this gives some idea of the possibilities

I did when i first started gaming using Airfix combat group
way back in the distant past . Found that I was playing more with the figures then the trains . Scale was not to much of a problem back then to a 10 year old. Still use some of the Airfix buildings now

Most model railway layouts tend to be long and narrow, so not a very suitable shape for wargaming on.

When I was young my Dad had model railway and built me my own layout. A dockside railway for me to play with my soldiers on as well as my trains. I had no scale issues, it was before I used formal rules.

The layouts are a bit terrain-dense with trees and such- and the terrain tends to be a bit fragile

Many model railways have 'fixed' terrain, so that can limit the representation. Accessability to parts of the board can also be an issue.

As to scale, most model railways also have to come to terms with ground compression – even a small station takes up a lot of space if strictly modelled to length & width & a prototypical modern US 60 car long train is going to be around 30 foot long if using HO (1/87). Not all that many railway modellers run prototypically long trains!

There are model railway scales that are roughly similar to wargames scales eg 1/148 is (US) N gauge, which fits with 10mm wargames figures. 1/87 is HO scale, which works with the larger 15/18mm figures, nominally 1/100. 1/76 is OO, which works with 20mm (1/72) figures. 1/64 is S, roughly equivalent to 25/28mm (1/56) etc. It depends how far your tolerence extends for (usually) visual compromise.

Personally, I'm reasonably happy using HO structures with 1/100 figures. In any case a lot of the older European plastic kits are, although nominally HO scale, actually 1/100 in scale, having been downsized by the manufacturers to produce a smaller footprint on the layout.

That said I'm toying with the idea of using HO structures (DPM, Walthers etc) to produce a US urban layout which could double as a setting for some 'film noir' skirmishes using Rebel & Khurasans gangsters & police etc. Think Prohibition, warehouses, backstreets, & the like.

I use a mix of HO scale building kits and scratch built for WW2 games. For British Colonial games I used Thomas the Tankengine locomotives and rolling stock, with some modification. Got rid of the faces, mostly. Also used the same as the basis of my improvised armored train. I really like the results I achieved. Don't own a digital camera, or I would include photos.

By an amazing coincidence, we will be having a Boxer Rebellion game on Saturday, using Admiral Seymour's train.

Obviously, not a game set on a model RR layout, but still…

At the Steamtown Mall in Scranton, there is a huge layout representing downtown Scranton. My first thought when I saw it was to have a Zombie game.

I think that a game on a RR layout would have the same problems as a Pirate game set on fully rigged ships. Too many things to get in the way of moving figures around. Too much hard work down the drain if something snaps.
I have always said that gaming terrain and display terrain are two totally different things.

If so what scale railway / figures do you use, and how do you handle the compromise between figure 'scale' and railway modelling 'scale' ?

The train we will be using is a "toy train" scale. With individually based skirmish figures, the question of scale is irrelevant. However, once you start using bases or elements, with a figure repressenting "many" people, I would treat the train as mere scenery, and irrelevant to the game.

Many, many years ago (I was like 6 years old) I remember a big model railroad layout in a hobby shop. It had a lot of different sections with a different theme in each section. But one section was World War II and there was a battle set up with little Mini-tanks fighting in a rail yard. I was incredibly impressed with that and it probably had a big influence in getting me interested in wargaming.

For 1/48th scale skirmish battles, we frequently use O scale stuff (buildings, Plasticville trees, vehicles, civilians, old Marx). Less frequently, we use O scale trains and Mike's snap-together RR track. We have actually played on static RR layouts, but replay value using fixed landscape elements goes stale quickly.

A previous version of my N-gauge WWI railway layout was used for a railroad operation wargame. The layout was divided into sectors, which could suffer random attacks each turn, modified by how close to the 'front' that sector was. The attacks were air, artillery, and ground raids (armored cars or cavalry). The sectors could be defended by troops, AA or armored trains. The objective was to move loaded trains from one end of the layout to the other. Figures were 10-12mm.

link

So 1:100 tracks are best suited for 15mm minis?

So 1:100 tracks are best suited for 15mm minis?

Well the nearest to 1/100 is TT gauge (at ~1/102), but that is very hard to find these days – and very expensive!

However, since many "15mm" figures are nearer 18mm you can usually get away with "HO scale" (1/87).

Saw this layout at Manchester Model Railway Exhibition a couple of years back. Excellent

link

I game with my S Gauge layout. Or more accurately, I leverage a lot of the S gauge stuff onto the game table. We used it with the Battlefield Evolution stuff and had not scale issues. But the BE stuff was supposed to be 1/65, so pretty darn close.

I have some buildings I bought from the local hobby shop, which mostly caters to model RR people. I think they're HO scale, and they work well enough with my 20mm (1/76 mostly) models and figures.

Never built it, but I did sketch out plans for modelling Boston's modern Government Center T stop in S-scale, complete with the back area access corridors and service stairways up to Government Center. And with the old "Scollay Square" sign that had long remained on a currently unused stretch of back platform.

As this station has a Y-shaped run-around track for turning cars, it would be a completely working layout with trollies off in the tunnel able to change tracks and come back through.

The plan was also to model a Type 5 Trolley with a Progressive Party campaign ad for Walter A. O'Brien on the side -- a ghost train with Charlie still riding! Would be a festive setting for zombie games.

We've bought loads of 2nd Hand faller/kibri buildings for our WW2 Europe games and find they are pretty sturdy, though I don't think cardboard ones (superquick etc) would last for long.
We do struggle to find suitable buildings for our WW2 Asia games (Burma/Malaya) so if you have any ideas….

Gunboat said "I did when i first started gaming using Airfix combat group way back in the distant past . Found that I was playing more with the figures then the trains . Scale was not to much of a problem back then to a 10 year old. Still use some of the Airfix buildings now"

My brother and I had the same experience. Also used for Civil War. Somehow he figured out how to induce a power surge to blow up/derail my troop train. Later used the board without the tracks. Still have it. Our dad probably built it around 1959.

So 1:100 tracks are best suited for 15mm minis?

Really depends on what the local gauge is. Russia and Finland run on a broad gauge, which is a little smaller than HO. TT or HOn3.5 is closest to 'standard gauge', 4' 8.5".

The hill country in India runs on very narrow gauge, which is closest to N gauge or HOn30" (the difference is the scale of the ties). But the flat country in India runs on a very broad gauge of 5 feet 6 inches, which is just about spot on to HO.

I've used my dads O gauge tramway for wargaming. There's very few buildings, so the scenic aspects lend itself to anywhere in Western Europe between the wars.

Since I only game 28mm and 20mm, about the only thing that distinguishes a model train board from the ping-pong tables I have is the absence of a train. Every once in a while I have one of those too.

We game at 1/144, which is one of a multitude of definitions of N gauge wold wide, using 12mm figs. Not on model railway terrain as that is fixed and unsiuitable for heavy play which would cause uneccessary damage. We do use the occational N guuge accessory. The ground scale compression is commnon to Railways and Wargamers. All are compromises. Ours is that for real ranges up to about 100m we add around 30m to 50m to the range. This is about the width of a road on our tables. Hence a 60m range weapon has about 100m range. This typically gets the weapon range it from 1 house across the road to the next house comfortablely. At 60m ground scale it would bearly get across the road. Even then we ignore gardens to swing the large elemet entity density higer. For longer ranges this error is insignficant and can be neglected. Rifle range at 300m is sufficent such that where complex terrain like urban areas, the available range ranges are not much in excess of this so the distortion is not too noticeable. This is sort of the assumption in crossfire. Inevitablely the entituy density is about 25 tines to low. I house and yard represents 25 in reality (area scaling). In practice by the time you get say 20 buildings, you get way more houses than elements to house them so adding more does not make the tactics better it just makes the attacks much quicker, as you eliminate hundreds of empty houses nither side would fing attractive. Approximation yes, but acceptable to us.

I have used HO scale plastic buildings with my 1/76 scale models and 20mm figures in some of my online games, such as this one: link

Here's one another GM ran that had a RR track and some RR cars (don't know how L&N cars got to Belgium!), which I think were HO scale. link

Another by a third GM with RR track, etc.: link