Excess Baggage - Ox Carts from Hinchliffe

 

I've just added a Hinchliffe ox cart to the baggage train and here it is together with one I did earlier - one of the tumbril carts. Hinchliffe always made nice equipment pieces and artillery and these are EG 12 Ox cart, 2 oxen and driver on foot (suitable for all periods) and EG 16 Medieval Tumbril with 2 oxen. I picked the ox cart up second hand with a ACW period driver and this stack of corn sheaths, which I don't think came with the original model. 

The baggage train gets used alongside my more modern armies so its been given a coat of matt varnish and mounted onto a textured mdf base. 

Not sure when these models were made, but they appear in The Hinchliffe Handbook published 1976. 

The little house and terrain features in the background were made for me by Matt Fletcher of Emperor Toads Emporium. 

Sturdy brutes these oxen! There were only the two designs but they have a rugged charm. Here's a couple of spares going about their business. 

The tumbril cart. The yoke comes complete with cast-on strapwork - two long lengths of metal strap that you have to arrange to make the chest strap and then tie round the prongs on the top of the yoke. 

Or... cut them off and use greenstuff to make straps like I've done here. It's a lot easier! 

No such thing as greenstuff  in the 1970's of course - it was common to make straps from paper, old metal paint tubes, strips of linen and such-like.

Ox cart. Strange wheel design of a kind I've not seen before - looks the part though. 

I've only just noticed how the oxen's horns are bent forward on these and upwards on the others. Hinchliffe used a very soft - rather leady - metal which bends easily. This does allow for a certain amount of animation - as well as bending those metal straps into place as I've done here.  

Hinchliffe also made donkeys with an assortment of loads and here's a couple of them from a selection I've painted at different times over the years. 

Not sure when these appeared but they are not in The Hinchliffe Handbook so terminus post quem 1976 I suppose. I acquired these in the late 70s. 

This one must have been painted forty years ago - I recognise the shade of  yellow-ochre Pelikan Plaka I've used to paint the saddle bags! I didn't think they made PP anymore but I see it's still available, now in 50ml pots. I wonder if anybody still uses it. 

As you can see this beast is mounted onto a GW base - and I still have a bunch of pack horses and mules on trad green basses like this. I suppose they 'go with' my old green based goblin and elf armies. Maybe I'll re-base the lot one day just to have them the same.