Gatling Guns & Machine Guns in Spaghetti Westerns - And a related Figure Conversion

Since the Dawn of the 'Spaghetti Western' movie-genre, it seems that Gatling- and machine guns have been present in several of them. Someone (with better time than me) have counted the presence and use of such weapons in about 95 Western-movies. Most of them are 'Spaghetti Westerns' and someone even took the time to counting kills and estimating type of guns. In some of the Spaghetti Western movies the Gatling- or machine guns are not stationary, but even carried and operated by a single person in 'Rambo style'. The first time I saw this in a western movie was in "Django" (where he kept his freelanced machine gun in a coffin).

Realistic or not, this is something I've been wanting to replicate and capture in model when doing cinematic Old West wargames, and it would give much more firepower to a single figure. The only 19th century Gatling gun I own, is an ACW Union (firing) Gatling from Britains. This is a large crew-served weapon and not exactly what I was looking for.

Many of the Gatling- or machine guns in western movies are not exact replications of the real thing, and many of them looks like 'fantasy guns'. Therefore it was not important to me to make an exact model of such a weapon, just more like a resemblance.  At Thingeverse I found a 28mm scale "Gatling-Machine gun". It's actually neither as it has the same rotating barrels as a Gatling gun (looking like a Colt) but at the same time has the trigger system of a 'Maxim Machine gun'. I liked the magazine. I think this will look good in the hands of a Cowboy.

Now I needed to find a suitable figure. Last year I re-armed one of my inexpensive Airfix Cowboy knock-offs with a shotgun. I like this hip-firing pose, and thinks that would be a good starting-point for a 'Rambo-looking mitrailleuse firing Cowboy'. 

I also wanted this cowboy to look a little different than the 2 other figures I have in the same pose, so I decided to add a coat to him made with 'Green Stuff'.

Then he was finally ready for some priming, painting and sealing. I was inspired by Franco Nero's first appearance as 'Django' when I painted this miniature. Even if he looks all black, I've tried to capture the very dark blue from the movie:

How to use this miniature in games?

No any (free) 'Old West' wargame- or RPG rules I know include rules for machine guns, so some improvisation is necessary to use this miniature in a game. I simply suggest to use this as same stats as a 'rifle-shooter' but with 3 rounds each time instead of one, making it more likely to hit one target or to make multiple damage in a cluster of targets. 

Alternatively if using other rules than specific 'Old West' ones, just treat it as a LMG if the rules include such weapon.

It looks like he is ready for going rouge in future games...

Tour de Garden Part II - Pletten Railway revisited

It's typical, but as soon as I hit the publish-button on my last blogpost about our 'Garden Railway Marathon', another day out and running session was suggested. -This time as running session instead of a regular Tuesday club-evening at our Model Railway Club. I usually work odd hours, nights, weekends, red dates and so on, so I'm not always able to attend to our club-meetings on Tuesdays. But last night Thomas invited the club over for a running session at his Pletten Railway again, and that is actually on the way (via a slight detour) to my work, so I was able to make a stop there before going to work. Since I'm commuting by motorcycle I wasn't able to bring more trains that I could fit in my pannier again

This time I was able to fit wagons loaded with a complete Flosssack Pionierfähre/ Pioner Ferry.

The trains are getting ready in the Fiddle yard. These two are firing Live Steam Locomotives:

Here are some impressions of our day out:

I saw the prototype for this model when we visited Switzerland last year:

This is a Piko G-scale model of a V60 repainted as a Norwegian State Railway Di.5 from the 90ies. A very well done paint job indeed:

It looks like there is a small music festival by the coffee-machine:

As I've said before, Garden Railways are in the very social end of the hobby:

Thank you very much for your invitation and hospitality Thomas!

The next blogpost will be something more 'wargame' related...