Archive for the ‘ railway modelling ’ Category

Prague 2018: Pranks [part08]

These people have a weird humour. Here some examples. First thing, to put pinapple over a pizza.

Graphic rules. They want to dictate what you can or cannot do. In details.

This was in a cemetery. Is it useful to remind that inside is prohibited to inject drugs or to skate? And absolutely forbidden to destroy vegetation or tombs? However beware to transport suitcases inside a cemetery because it is normal that there are thieves ready to steal them.

How have fun during a universal exposition: deformed looking glasses. From their show in 1891 they saved this room and a small Eiffel tower replica.


How to put fun and realism inside your dioramas: wreckages, car crashes, animals at the large, death.






To end, how to use a window to start a war: 1618.

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Prague 2018: Games [part05]

And now something less macabre: games in Prague. Here the Golem in the local Hamleys shop.

The communist version of Playmobil.

Playing chess with three people.

Game pieces and dice from Celtic times.

Under a building, instead of a car parking, you can find two storeys with railway model dioramas. More then huge. An hell of buildings and water strangulated by rails that go nowhere. The heaven for a railway modeller.







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Modena Play 2016: wargaming

After the overall part in the previous post, here the focus is on wargame relate part of Modena Play.

We stayed two days, the first as visitors and to speak with people. This is true even because we are preparing a new game for Lucca Comics & Games together with another editor here present. The second day we were guests in the space of roleplay editors, so Andrea could run some demos of Advanced Song of Blade and Heroes.

Wargame part is not so historical hardcore oriented as other convention where we go usually. Here there was a WH40K tournament: masses of mega tanks that shoot each other at 10cm distance…

Following, another tournament, with Flames of War: masses of historical tanks that shoot each other at 10cm distance…

Inside the tensile structure there was the two-dimensional wargame section. A place where cardboard pieces are positioned with tweezers.

Wings of War games. The author flew around the tables.

Lego imitators do what Lego have to do: historic Lego sets as Romans or WWII.

At this point Gundam kits is a modelling genre in and of itself.

There were some dioramas with German WWII theme full of details and with mixed settings. Really beautiful things!

More wargames were around. As more boargames and interesting things. This is only a partial report of what you can find in Modena Play. I hope to return here before another 5 years.

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Empoli Wargame 2015 (pt.1)

Back to 3rd and 4th of October. After Romics we rested one day. Then on car toward Empoli for one of the best Italian wargame conventions. This was the first time for me. Two days of fun. The place is huge and it is inside the local fair palace. Empoli is a sort of part of Florence’s economic area. As hotel a budget place in a near town specialised in ceramic. But now a speed review of the tables.

A club of young people prepared games for younger people. Patience, creativity and great things.

A boardgame-wargame extended to bigger dimensions. And dinosaurs. That cannot be small. Note children around. Spreading the disease…

Always simple games but for older people than children.

Playing with 6mm on a map. Captivating. But abuse of hand lens to understand who is killing who.

Salini and his crusade for a new Italian tournament standard adopting “L’Art de la Guerre”. Maybe the new sensation for DBA, DBM, DBMM, FOG orphans?

Di Bartolo and his Napoleonic dream. He use an abacus for malus and bonus, and this sometime isn’t a bad idea. And his soldiers are always the best.

Naval war with big sailing ship. This deserve an applause.

Urban fight in WWII. I like these things a lot. And I want to replicate them with my Flyton scenario. What is it? It is one project of mine that I frozen in the last years. You can find traces on this blog. Now with the new house and new spaces to put scenario elements I can build my little city.

A wild western town and its leisure facilities.

Frogs versus turtles. An epic struggle.

More canonic fight. Did I never transpire that I love Romans?


The convention was originally a modelling convention. But now wargames are really dominant. However something remains, as static modelling and railway modelling. Here some wagons as we know it (dirty and shabby). And than a near station in a big diorama.


On the next post more on Empoli.

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Trieste – part 2

After the part 1 here the part 2: more things about my holidays in Trieste.

This is the church in a Venetian gothic style in Muggia, a fishermen village at the south end of the huge Trieste harbour. Only some more kilometres along the coast and there is Capodistria, now Koper in Slovenia. Then Croatia, ex Italian Istria.

In Trieste there is a huge railway system. This was useful for the role of the harbour. Now some train deposits and railways are abandoned.

Inside an unused rail station now there is a rail museum.

This is the aspect nowadays.

Among rust, a German WWII wagon.

Some dioramas reproduce local railways in various years.

I did an amazing find! It is a tram for the line that I used to catch in my childhood! I live very near the terminus. In 1980, after more than 15 years of construction, an underground line substituted the tram line and these trams were retired. This is the Tram ACEGAT number 446, built for Trieste and used in Rome after production engineering. Moreover, this vehicle was used to test the actual underground line. On a window there is a trace of an advert with the name of my road. It felt so weird to find a piece from my past in a far city.

The sea museum. The strange thing is that on the walls there is an huge exposition about Austria-Hungary navy with pictures of victories against Italy! Yeah, that navy was constituted by Trieste people!

Far East museum. A samurai armour.

Japanese steel.

A sword made by coins. It was used as a kind of wedding gift.

The castle of Trieste is built on the top of the hill on the sea. Inside a Roman museum, and an armours and weapons museum. A medieval Syrian halberd is the Trieste’s heraldic sign.

More things that we watched in Trieste. Here some condoms with uncommon shapes. Look at that with the Big Ben rectangular shape…

Fashion toilet and bidet for luxury homes, with python or crocodile texture!

A very pleasant holiday. When the next?

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Ludica Roma 2013: overview

And now the report about Ludica Roma 2013 convention, at last! Three daysv in Rome, my city, full of what you desire about games. They were the 29th & 30th of November and the 1st of December. Here we go…

The convention was held in 4 pavilions. We were in this one dedicated to wargames and boardgames.

Some volunteers managed, with an explanation of rules, an area to play boardgames.

Other notable things: Rubik’s cube competitions as solutions with blinded eyes; painting laboratories; abstract boardgaming; Subbuteo.

Another pavilion, only for children. All kinds of games and experiences.

The modelling pavilion: cars, earth movers, trains, ships and more. The paradise of radio controlled models.

This rail modelling circuit is based about a road near where I live, at one of the external gates of Rome built inside one of the main Roman aqueducts. In this zone there was the Gothic camp during a siege of Rome during the Gothic Wars. Moreover here happened some fights against Allies by Italian soldiers in the defence of Rome in 1944.

Some vintage action figures in a vendor area in this pavilion.

The softair (and other ways to shooting people safety) and reenactment pavilion.

And after this “garibaldino” (a fighter of the independent and volunteer army who fought for the unification of Italy) I promise that I will continue with this report another day.

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DBA Terni 2013

Full of events weeks. So the next posts will be dedicated to a retrospect of my past events among some new things. Now I want to show you something happened the 10th of this month: the DBA tournament in Terni.

The participants, from Roma (8), Arezzo (3) and Terni (1). We were in an hospitable miniature shop called “La Tana della Donna Nana” (“the dwarf-woman vault”, it is called from an Italian joke).

The smallest coup for the third place in the tournament. Another personal success in the last part of the season. Effectively I reached in the last three tournaments the 1st, 4th and 3rd place!

A classic DBA match that I lost: I vs Salini. This time was my very bad luck, a constant 1 result on dice.

My glorious Roman army versus vile Egyptians scum.

A classic DBA match that I win: I vs professor Mariani. This time a tie and a lot of personal boldness.

My camp. All roads lead to Rome.

One club partner of mine versus Gaul.

A couple of tables during the tournament.

Someone succeed to stop Gasbarri at the first match!!! However, after he won the other three matches…

This was the last date of the annual DBA Italian tournament, so we consigned the prize to Gasbarri as best Italian player, a fact that we know very well…

In the morning, while we were reaching the train for Terni, we saw this steam train. It was used for a special journey that day. We took a more standard train instead. And now we are waiting for the 2014 annual DBA torunament…

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Happymodel (oct. 2013)

This is the market for railway modelling in Rome. Approximately every a couple of months, or more, we have this event inside a school gym. It can be the opportunity to find something that can be useful for my miniatures.

Railway modelling is a hobby almost comparable with 3D wargame. But the real effort is to create large dioramas. We think always to create a movable space where put miniatures in a way to move them easily and precisely. Instead their aim is to have a fixed realistic landscape where trains can move along a rail net. So, we have some common characteristics, but very different scales and aims.

I feel this hobby world as distant from me. I don’t mind all kinds of railway cars available and what is related to them. They are captivating but I can’t understand 120 euro for a little piece of plastic with wheels. Whereas I find justifiable the same amount of money for miniatures or action figures…

Some remarkable things. Some tramway cars used on local lines. Note the double decker used at the begin of the last century.
Below, a 54mm diorama with toy soldiers. I can’t understand why these miniatures are sold inside these kind of fairs. They aren’t trains. However I saw around someone that sold single Foundry’s medieval miniatures with a wood base and a banner at the bargain price of 12 euro… Toy soldiers hobbyists don’t know the real price of our miniatures…

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