First western building completed

The first building for De Lancy is complete, well almost there are a few things I will probably touch up in due course.  That said it is in a playable form so the De Lancy General Store, proprietor Colonel J De Lancy, is open for business.  It's made of balsa and bass wood cladding over a foam board core.  I went with a removable flat roof design for this one.  Signage is a mix of home designed and Sarissa Precision items. The brown plate part way up the right side of the building is:

a) a plate for me to mount a lamp to, and

b) a disguise for a poor bit of building work!

My shoddy workmanship shows in this shot!

And some of the required touching up can be seen here.

I copied some modelling tips from a couple of blog sites where the authors had scratch built their towns, but I'm not entirely happy with the suggested build process.  To me the main failing is that there is a solid box core to the building with no gaps for windows or doors, so figures inside cannot be seen from the street and doors are always closed.  For my next build I have cut gaps in the foam board so let's see how that works.  The other issue is that there is no internal detail.  I don't think the designer really intended fights to happen inside buildings.  I'm expecting that they will.

That next building under construction is a County Sheriff's office and jail (Yes, I know that civilised folks spell it gaol, but this is Texas when all is said and done).  This represents a stone-built structure, so I have been inscribing the foam board and applying washes to make it look, well, stony!  That also means no balsa cladding is needed.  Unlike the store I am putting in internal walls and detail.  At present I have the external walls done and one of the internal walls completed but the building is not glued together.  The bits of bass wood lying on the foam in the picture are being tested for size, they will line cut outs for the doorways and windows to give a flat surface to place doors and windows into.

Who knew stone walls came flat pack!

As back story to the building I'm saying that it was a block house built as a defence against Commanche raids by the Mexican military back in the 1820's.  Subsequently it was taken over by the Texas Rangers as a way station before settling into its current use.  It will probably be known locally as the 'old block house' rather than the sheriff's office.

The end of an era

I have waited a few days to put my thoughts in writing since the death of Queen Elizabeth.  I'm not what you might call a dyed in the wool monarchist, after all I fight for Parliament when re-enacting the Civil Wars.  That said I'm not exactly a republican either, the thought of yet another job for politicians to screw up doesn't exactly fill me with glee.  What I do recognise is that for my entire adult life the same person has been Head of State.  Not having a huge personal effect on my life and yet managing to be a huge presence within it at the same time.  The ER II on post boxes (in England at least, she was Elizabeth the First in Scotland), the head on money and stamps, the person I swore allegiance to when I joined the TA.  Yes, there in so many aspects of daily life.

I think the suddenness of it all has been the most peculiar aspect of it all.  Greeting the incoming PM on Tuesday and dead two days later.  No time to get used to the idea.  Now it will be a new head on coins (looking in a different direction), a new set of words the National Anthem yet for most day-to-day purposes it is business as usual.  Others have given tributes in the media that sum up a life of service albeit one with few financial worries and a guarantee of continuing employment (although that was also a promise of dropping in your traces as well) but not a life without cares.  Looking in from the outside it is hard to know what sort of person she really was, but to me at least it seems clear that she cared about the role she filled and its continuation and the clincher to me she stood head and shoulders above the dirty mess of day-to-day British politics.  I might not be huge fan of hereditary monarchs, but I like the alternatives even less.

I have lived my life as a New-Elizabethan and from Tuesday teatime I'm now a something else.  What that will be called I'm not sure, Carolinian perhaps?  It really is the end of an era and the start of something new.

What does a good Old West town need?

A Western shoot out game needs a locale, perhaps not a full town but at least a main street, but what businesses would be on that street and the ones branching off it.  In fact, what would a town look like back in the period 1870 to 1890(ish).    So, it was off to Google to check a couple of forums for some information.  The answer I found is that town layouts vary by location, type of settlement (that's the main industry the town supports) and how long the town had been in existence.

Location would have been partially linked to the type of settlement, for example a mining town isn't going to be founded where there are no minerals to exploit.  In cattle country the movie style grid layout would be standard, but in areas originally settled by the Spanish there was a formal layout that was followed, based on royal law.  In mining areas towns tended to be in valleys below the mines and followed the line of the valley sides.  Railroad towns tend to develop with main street at right angles to the track with stock pens and related businesses over on the 'wrong side of the tracks'.  Most main streets were much wider than we might expect at around 100 feet to allow a wagon and its team to turn 180 degrees.  Side streets were slightly narrower at around 60-80 feet and residential areas had far narrower streets.

For most towns the first buildings would be a store and a saloon.  These would start with tented establishments and if the town prospered these would be converted to more permanent structures.  Brick or stone buildings would be rare outside the centre of older, more important settlements with two exceptions the jail and the bank.  These might not be made entirely of brick or stone, but the secure areas would aim to be made from one of the other (depending on local material availability).   In the Southwest adobe buildings would be found in the older settlements and those built to the royal law would have a plaza and a church from almost the very start.

In terms of businesses, as noted above, the average town starts with the general store and saloon but there would be more drinking establishments than you might expect (more akin to UK market town numbers in the period up to the mid 1970s) with roughly one saloon/bar for each 100 inhabitants.  A cattle town would also have stock yards from very early on in its history.  After that a livery stable and blacksmith and additional stores would be added with the owners often living in the back or above the shop.  As those businesses prospered or if the town was attracting families, then housing would appear at the edge of town.  With time a cemetery, County Sheriff or Town Marshall's office/jail would appear.  In farming areas, a seed store would appear fairly early on.  Other businesses might include:

- A hotel 

- Restaurants (Man's gotta eat)

- Billiard Hall (more common than I expected)

- Undertaker (Can't leave 'em on top)

- Saw mill/lumber yard (the lumber for buildings has to come from somewhere)

- House of ill repute (or three)

- Barbers/dentist

- Doctors office

- Gunsmith (for passing bandits to steal weapons from)

- Butcher

- Baker

- Dry Goods Store

- Clothing Store

- Rooming house

- Land Office (for burning down to get rid of land grant records)

Eventually if the town attracted families a schoolhouse and a church would be built.  There was some basic urban planning with building lots marked out but no strict rules on what buildings went where but the main street tended to be where the less salubrious bars and businesses were sited the older areas being dodgier than the newer ones.  Spanish founded towns had to conform to Royal building laws so would generally have a more structured layout to the centre of town.  One reason for starting in 1869 is that I can legitimately have a limited number of buildings in De Lancy and add to them over time.

Basic construction front view

and rear view

Front with just the window frames to complete and roof to build.

I'm aiming to start with a couple of stores, a saloon and some stock pens.  I will also need a county Sherrif's office for story line purposes. Work has started on an initial scratch build store but longer term I'm eying up MDF kits.  The De Lancy Construction Co has started operations!

The Painting Table - August 2022

A little late with the August update.  I didn't get much painted this last month as Mrs E and I took a holiday at the start of August and went away re-enacting over the Bank Holiday weekend.  My total output was four 28mm western shootout figures.  I did base and texture twenty-one 3mm Soviet light anti-tank and anti-aircraft vehicles, but I still have a bit of work to do on those so I can't count those as completed.

The monthly painting table shot

Space is starting to appear on the table but fear not there is a lot of unpainted lead to go yet!  You can just about see the based Soviet BRDM2 Sagger AT missile armed) vehicles and  SA-9 Gaskin AA vehicles (on round bases).

Three more shootists and a target ... er ...bystander

So welcome four more citizens to De Lancy County.