Operational Terrain 5: Railways using Gingham Printed Hard Craft Felt

Following my Experiment with Felt terrain on Hex Grid, I was unsatisfied with using a grey felt strip for a railway line. So I went looking for a patterned felt that I could use. And I found it: Gingham Printed Hard Craft Felt in Black.

This is all part of my ongoing search for Operational terrain to inform the set of rules I’m thinking about called Deep Battle.

Gingham Printed Hard Craft Felt Sheet comes in, more or less, A4 sheets. And it is hard. I’ve never encountered hard felt before but I like it more than the normal soft stuff for roads and railway lines.

Gingham-40 Gingham Hard Craft Felt Sheet
Gingham-40 Gingham Hard Craft Felt Sheet

I chopped the felt sheet up with clothing scissors. I cut the strips to they had two lines of check in each “railway line”.

Gingham-39 Gingham Hard Craft Felt Railway Line
Gingham-39 Gingham Hard Craft Felt Railway Line

I think the effect on the table is better. Unfortunately, the photo doesn’t really do it justice.

Gingham-37 Gingham Felt Railway with Roads and Rivers
Gingham-37 Gingham Felt Railway with Roads and Rivers

For the sake of comparison I also took a photo of the same table with grey felt railway lines.

Gingham-38 Grey Felt Railway with Roads and Rivers
Gingham-38 Grey Felt Railway with Roads and Rivers

5 thoughts on “Operational Terrain 5: Railways using Gingham Printed Hard Craft Felt”

  1. Something else I’ve thought of using is the plastic mesh canvas used for making tapestries. It comes in various gauges. I’ve no idea if it would work, but if it did it could give you a perfect railway line effect.

    Reply
    • Richard, I’m sure experiments will continue.

      But I do recall that somebody told me, and it was probably you, that one of the advantages of using felt for roads, rivers, and railways, was that felt sticks to felt. Doesn’t float around. In contrast things like resin, metal, card, and plastic, on small terrain features, will float around on the table.

      Reply
  2. That’s especially true for Hexon, but there are ways for anchoring things. My Kriegspiel-style ceramic blocks are particularly slippery, but adding a self-adhesive label to the bottom was enough to fix it.

    I had a similar problem with sanded cork tiles in my ‘Crossfiregrad’ layout, so I stuck felt onto the bottom of the buildings.

    In this case you could stick the strips of mesh onto felt beds. Somebody needs to try it!

    Reply

Leave a Reply