"A Cold Front"

so now to return to the actual layout.

so first up was the scenic break, i managed to get hold of some lazer cut brick sheets, i put these together to make a small bridge.







then my lovelly wife got me a kit of a continental church, i thought that this would work perfectly for a make shift hospital



once i had built the main structure, i sprayed the entire thing in halford grey spray paint then picked out the whit washed window and door frame in white and picked out all the corner stones. at this point it looks really bright.



next up was adding the roof and painting. so i mixed up a merky brown running wash and washed it over the entire building, picking out individual stones and added a paste to recreate morter. the building was then lightly dry brushed.





also in a earlier post i mentioned that i had picked up a cheap resin cottage.

well i also attacked this with paint.







all in all quite pleased with how these turned out

 

I decided to start playing with some landscaping, using polystyrene and a hot wire cutter. However in true health and safety I made my own hot wire cutter that I connected to a car battery.







Obviously the british rail lamp is a little over scale but makes a great weight while the glue dries.



I may have very slightly over purchased plaster bandage.

You may remember from previous posts about my previous layouts that my daughter likes to help



With most the plaster bandage down the general shape of the layout starts to become clear, and the layout starts to come alive.

 

so as i want one end of my layout to be trenches going into the start of a forrest i needed to start making trees.

now the trees that i wanted to model are the really tall pine trees found in the ardine area of france.

so i set about getting the materials. i used coconut hanging basket liner, balsa dowl and a couple of different scatters.




so first up cutting the hanging basket liner into rough circles of different sizes, i then paced them onto a bbq scewer to make the base shape of the tree and sprayed brown.



starting to look like the land of the dead tree. now these trees are ever greens so even though they will be eventually covered in snow i needed to add foliage. so that off with spraying the tree with contact adhesive and adding the thicker darker scatter, then spraying again and adding the lighter scatter.



now for the trunks, i use 10mm balsa dowel. i firstly cut this to length.



i then attack these with a craft knife, so that they are no longer perfect and a little rough, once i have done this i then rub a wire brush up and down which brings out the natural grain. once dry they are sprayed brown and dry brushed. i then drill a hole in the top and insert the bbq skewer to complete the tree





ta da!!

however i have discovered that i need about double this many.

 

oh yes there are going to be a lot of those as well.

 

so next on my modelling board was the trench section, this is obviously a very important section. this is not a front line trench its a rear defence, so laid out differently to a front line trench.

basically front line trenches span many miles in a line with the odd zig zag to stop blasts and bullets travelling the length of the trench.

so I started off with the basic shape and broke out my favourite material, das clay.


so once the entire trench was covered in das clay I textured the ground level using a stiff brush.

I made the corrugated retaining walls from embossed plastikard.



I then set about making a lot and I mean a lot of sandbags from das clay, positioning them as I went. now this was time consuming.



I then cut blasa wood sheet into planks, this were placed on the to make foot / duck boards and the battons to hold the retaining walling in place.

the entire thing wa the painted the base colours.



the entire thing was then weathered, to give the trench that dirty look.

then to add some white metal details





then to see how the trees would look and added some more details.





I had to build this as a separate section as I am having to home school the children.