Old West – Converting the General Purpose Wagon

You might have read the article on the General Purpose Wagon by Great Escape Games last week, and as I mentioned among the last few sentences, I got a few more of the sprues for further kitbashing and conversions.

Being highly motivated to produce progress on this setting by Red Dead Redemption 2, as mentioned in an earlier post, I started the last save game and took a few pictures of the wagons in the game. Some were broken down, others filled with goods and personal objects, and all of them provided inspiration for some modification based upon the plastic kit.

I could have probably used far more than just the three additional kits and build 5, 8 or more converted wagons (if you're reading this Great Escape Games - feel free to send me a couple of sprues). With two full sets and three unhitched wagons, I would only have enough horses for two wagons (I could spread the crew across multiple wagons), and was thinking about what to do? Split one wagon into two shorter ones? Maybe. Create a convony, by adding multiple wagons together? I already pictured the wagon fort / corrals. But I'd need more than the few kits I have on hand for that. But a lead vehicle for one of the covered wagons would be interesting, maybe with a partially opened tarp.

I used the inner marking to cut down one of the tarps to 2/3 and placed a single arch in the front. Along with the covered wagon, where I shortened the draught pole, this would provide an interesting vehicle, for example for missions where I would have to raid a convoy or something similar. And it would provide a proper line of sight blocker in a city scenario.

Easy conversion, but now for something different. The broken down wagons, especially the ones from the loading screen of RDR2 really caught my eye. This would be a great scatter terrain. At first I hesitated "destroying" a 20 GBP kit for this purpose, but with the option to use one of the cheaper unhitched kits, this became much more reasonable.

I build the basic wagon pretty close to the instructions. Just with the difference, that I removed the grooves from the front axle, which gave me the option to turn it to the sides.

The wagon should be crashed and clearly damaged. I squeezed one of the springs from the drivers bench, to have the bench sink on one side, along with damaging the wheels on one side. Removing spokes as well as removing parts of the tire.

This already gave me a proper base for a damaged / broken down wagon. I added the mis-aligned bench, along with the "trunk door" only on one hinge.

Final step were the addition of three arches, and damaging the yoke as well as the draught pole. For more sturdiness I'll probably provide a base, with some rocks and markings on the damaged side.

And this is what I made with five wagons (two full sets and three unhitched sets). I saved about 30 EUR compared to buying five full sets and didn't have the feeling that I had to cheap out.

With the other things available, from the plastic barrels by Renedra, to some 3d printed bits and pieces for decoration, I think these will provide a pretty nice addition to my small western towns. I hope you liked my conversions and I'm looking forward to see what others have done with theirs.