Additions to my 009/H09 model railway locomotives and rolling stock

Kev Robertson (one of my very regular blog readers) very kindly sold me a brand-new 009 locomotive and some rolling stock to add to my collection.

The locomotive is a PECO 0-4-0 tender locomotive named Princess …

… and the rolling stock are a PECO bogie coach ...

.. and a PECO Guard's Van.

The locomotive is an excellent runner, but the bogie coach is a bit too long for the sharp curves on my current layout and it tends to derail on them if I am not careful. However, I have tried it on the bigger radius curves that I own, and it has no problems on them.

Wargame Developments Autumn Virtual Gathering

Yesterday I took part in the Wargame Developments Autumn Virtual Gathering.

This started - along with the annual Virtual Conference of Wargamers (VCOW) - as a result of the COVID pandemic and is a combination of Zoom presentations and online discussions, This year’s programme was as follows:

• 14.00: Welcome.
• 14.02: The Military History of Cyprus, Part Two: 1572 to 2024, a presentation.
• 15.00: Break.
• 15.10: The Future of Designer’s Notes in Wargames, a moderated forum.
• 16.25: Break.
• 16.35: Combat Photography 1914-1975: Control and Revolution, a presentation.
• 17.50: Break.
• 18.00: Tetrarchs, Barbarians, Heretics and Eunuchs: Wargaming the Later Roman Empire 284-641 AD, a discussion.
• 19.00: Break.
• 20.15: WATU, the real story, a presentation that might challenge the existing orthodoxy about the success of the WATU games.
• 21.15: Formal close of AVG 2024.
• 21.30: From Kaiserschlacht to Khe Sanh, an after-hours historical lecture and singalong on 1918 and 1968.

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This was probably the best of these events I have attended ... and I have been an attendee at the previous three.

The mixture of presentations and discussions meant that attendees were able to take an active part, and I must admit that I learned a great deal from the three presentations. I knew very little about the military history of Cyprus, almost nothing about the history of combat photography, and although I knew about the role of WATU, I had not realised that it was only one of several such training establishments across the world.

I found the discussion about designer's notes extremely interesting (I happen to be a great fan of them!) and I am already drafting a short article about this topic for possible publication in a future issue of THE NUGGET.

The session about wargaming the end of the Roman Empire was very interesting for me in view of Archduke Piccolo's article in the latest PORTABLE WARGAME COMPENDIUM entitled 'Constantinople Beleaguered'. Having taken part, I understood much more about the events leading to the split into the Eastern and Western Roman Empires.

This event was only open to members of Wargame Developments and is one of the major benefits of being a member of the organisation.

My 009/H09 model railway locomotives and rolling stock

Some time ag I promised Kev Robertson (one of my regular blog readers) that I would photograph the collection of locomotives and rolling stock that I’ve acquired to run on my 009/H09 model railway. When I did, I discovered that I own a lot more than I realised!

Locomotives (Runners)

Locomotives (Non-runners)

Passenger Carriages

Vans/Covered Goods Wagons

Open Wagons and Hopper Wagons

Most of the above were bought second-hand via eBay. Most of the ‘non-runners’ have faulty motors or drive systems, and several of the ‘runners’ have been brought back to life by cleaning the drive mechanisms, judicious use of oil on dry wheel bearings, and cannibalising some parts from the ‘non-runners’.

Let’s All Go And Fly (In) A Kite!!

(Apologies to Disney’s film ‘Mary Poppins’ for misquoting the title of one of the film’s songs.)

I finally got my two Blériot aircraft out of their boxes and ‘flying’ across some terrain … in this case, part of the Fobbing Marsh on my MUCKING FLATS AND FOBBING MARSH LIGHT RAILWAY model layout.

I am thinking about adding some markings to the model aircraft so that I can distinguish which of my imagi-nations they belong to, but at present that is not very high on my list of ‘things to do’.

Military parades in Chile

Since I broke my leg six months ago, I have become quite a devotee of YouTube, so much so that I have even started my own YouTube channel. Recently I discovered a number of videos from Chile that show its armed forces undertaking formal parades ... and they certainly go if for impressive displays!

For historical reasons, the Chilean Army has a very Prussian style when it comes to its dress uniforms, its music (including using the Preussischer Präsentiermarsch), and the way it mounts its parades. Its troops even use the traditional goosestep or Stechschritt (literally, 'piercing step') as the following photographs show:

Troopers of the 1st Cavalry (Horse Guards) Regiment 'Grenadiers' in their dress uniforms.

Soldiers from the NCO School still wear the German steel helmet (stahlhelm) on parade.

Gunners of the 1st Artillery Regiment in their dress uniforms. Note that the traditional spike on the pickelhaube helmet has been replaced by a ball, just as it was in the Prussian Army.

Only a few weeks ago, the Chilean public broadcaster, TVN (Televisión Nacional de Chile), broadcast a parade that lasted just under three and a half hours! (The first fifty-five minutes is a celebration of Chilean culture and features folk dance and music.)

It featured units from across the Chilean armed forces and was entitled Gran Parada Militar de Chile en el día de las Glorias del Ejército – 2024 and can be seen on YouTube here. It was interesting to see that some of those troops marching past wore uniforms that looked as if they dated from the Chilean War of Independence.

Watching this parade (and several others) certainly gave me a few ideas for uniforms for late nineteenth and early twentieth century imagi-nations.

Madasahatta, the prequel

Due to my ongoing mobility problems, I was unable to the to ‘The Other Partizan’ last weekend. Luckily for me, my old friend and fellow blogger David Crook did go … and was able to take some photographs of the League of Gentlemen Anti Alchemists’ anti-slavery game.

I understand that the driving force behind the game was Chris Hardman, who – along with Eric’s son William, David Crook, Neil Fox, and myself – took part in Eric Knowles’ Madasahatta Campaign, and it was great to see that he used it as a setting for this wargame.

Eric's original Madasahatta map. Click on the image to enlarge it.

A recently re-drawn and coloured version of the Madasahatta map. Click on the image to enlarge it.

The Royal Navy action against the slavers took place forty years before the Madasahatta Campaign took place, and featured some typical Knowlesian characters:

Royal Navy Landing Force

• Major Boote-Necke (Royal Marines)
• Sergeant Wilson (Royal Marines)
• Captain Povey (Royal Navy)
• Lieutenant Phillips (Royal Navy)
• CPO Pertwee (Royal Navy)
• Lieutenant Strange-Wayze (Royal Marine Artilery)
• Major Bloodnok (Zanzibarian Army)

Zanzibarian Slavers

• Mustafa Leikh
• Shufti Khush
• Ali Oop
• Abdul the Terrible
• Bungdit Dhin
• Randhi Bhugah
• Omar Bhang

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Please note that the photographs featured above are © David Crook and Chris Hardman.

Dad's Game: Old School Tabletop Wargaming Rules

Just before I broke my leg, I bought a copy of Patrick and Earl Boal’s DAD'S GAME: OLD SCHOOL TABLETOP WARGAMING RULES but never got around to reading it until now as it had been left on my worktable in the toy/wargame room.

The book is mainly scanned images of the rules written by Earl Boal in the 1980s. Most of the text is typed – although there are some handwritten annotations – and survived because they were kept in plastic ring file pockets. The book ends with the text of a letter containing a battle report that was sent by Earl to his son (Patrick) along with a number of black & white photographs of a wargame they had fought some months earlier.

As to the rules … well, it is stated clearly in the introduction that they were based on the rules in Charles Grant's THE WAR GAME.

However, the Boal's adapted them so that they could use the wide variety of figures in their collection. This is borne out by the photographs of one of their wargames which shows Napoleonic soldiers fighting troops armed with pikes!

I bought these rules out of simple curiosity … and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the short booklet that contains them. In my opinion, the price – which is £3.22 from Amazon – is very reasonable and any wargamer who enjoys using Charles Grant’s rules should enjoy reading this publication.

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DAD'S GAME: OLD SCHOOL TABLETOP WARGAMING RULES was written Patrick and Earl Boal and published by them in 2023 (ISBN 979 8 3978 8259 0).

I bought a new laptop …

… and it’s taken me ages to set it up!

My laptop has done me excellent service since I broke my leg and was no longer able to get up to my desktop PC. However, I originally bought it to take on cruises and its screen is a little on the small side for regular everyday use, so, when I saw a slightly bigger, new, laptop with a 14-inch screen was on sale during the recent Amazon Prime event, I bought a new one. It is a Hewlett-Packard 14-inch Laptop with an Intel Pentium Silver N5030 Processor, 4 gigabytes of random-access memory, and 128 gigabytes of solid state memory, and it cost me £179.99 instead of the usual pre-event £299.99.

My new laptop was delivered on Saturday evening, and I spent quite a chunk of yesterday setting it up, installing the software I habitually use, and adding my email accounts. In fact, it took me so long that I didn’t finish doing all the tasks I have to do and I will be trying to complete the job today.

The new screen is much easier to use thanks to its increase in size, and the operating system (Windows 11) seems to work faster than it did on my older Windows 10 laptop. I hope that I’ll be able to use new laptop in place of my existing one and my desktop PC. This will certainly make life easier for me and will hopefully free up space in our small home office.

South American Battleships 1908–59: Brazil, Argentina, and Chile's great dreadnought race

In the run up to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, there were two international naval arms races taking place: the one between Britain and Imperial Germany and a second that saw Argentina, Brazil, andChile competing with each other for naval supremacy on the South American continent. SOUTH AMERICAN BATTLESHIPS 1908–59: BRAZIL, ARGENTINA, AND CHILE'S GREAT DREADNOUGHT RACE tells that story in a quick and easy to read way.

The book is split into the following sections:

• Introduction
• Design and Development
• Enter the dreadnought
• Brazil starts an arms race
• Argentina and Chile join the race
• The race unravels
• Operational History
• World War I
• Between the Wars
• World War II and afterwards
• The ships
• Minas Geraes class
• Rio de Janeiro (later the Turkish Sultan Osman I and then HMS Agincourt)
• Riachuelo
• Rivadavia class
• Almirante Latorre
• Almirante Cochrane/Eagle
• Bibliography
• Index

This naval arms race provides lots of opportunity for those naval wargamers who like to fight 'What if ...?' battles, especially if one includes the battleships that were projected but which never saw service with a South American navy (e.g. the Riachuelo and the Almirante Cochrane).

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SOUTH AMERICAN BATTLESHIPS 1908–59: BRAZIL, ARGENTINA, AND CHILE'S GREAT DREADNOUGHT RACE was written by Mark Lardas, illustrated by JB Illustrations (Julian Baker) and Johnny Shumate, and published in 2024 by Osprey Publications (ISBN 978 1 4728 2510 0).

Aircraft for my Belle Époque project

Now that I can access my toy/wargame room, I’ve begun to think about doing some work on my Belle Époque project. I wanted to add some early aircraft to the armed forces of the larger imagi-nations, and a quick search on eBay led me to purchase two Corgi diecast models of the Blériot Type XI monoplane in which he crossed the English Channel in 1909.

The Blériot Type XIs entered service with the Italian and French armed forces in 1910, and in 1911 some were used by Italy in North Africa during the Italo-Turkish War. This was the first use of heavier-than-air aircraft in a war. By 1912 the French and Spanish had used Blériot XIs to bomb Rif tribesmen in Morocco and the Royal Flying Corps had taken delivery of its first Blériot XIs.

By the start of World War I military versions of the Blériot XIs were in service with eight French, six British, and six Italian squadrons. They were mainly used for observation duties and as trainers, but some single-seaters served as light bombers that could carry a bomb load of up to 55lbs/25kg.

The Blériot XI’s characteristics were:

• Crew: 1
• Dimensions:
• Length: 7.62m (25ft)
• Wingspan: 7.79m (25ft 7in)
• Height: 2.69m (8ft 10in)
• Wing area: 14 sq m (150 sq ft)
• Empty weight: 230kg (507lbs)
• Propulsion: 1 × Anzani 3-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine driving a 2-bladed Chauvière Intégrale propeller
• Performance:
• Maximum speed: 75.6km/h (47.0mph, 40.8 knots)
• Service ceiling: 1,000m (3,300ft)