Hello Folks, Thought I would post my latest efforts. It will be a fairly large diorama set in May 1940 in Belgium I think. I have a thing for the allies light tanks and all those cool rivets!
Will atempt to show a small industrial building that manufactures boilers and such. It will have a narrow gauge tramway that connects to a rail yard to move it's products. It will be an older building with steam powered belt driven machinary.
It will show an interior that looks like the workers have just fled with the start of fighting. One wall and the roof will be damaged and the surrounding area will contain damaged allied tanks with the germans moving through.
Photos I have found for ref. so far are mostly after DDay in this area and show the results of 4 years of battle. I will use some ideas from these but will not show so much destruction.
Photo credit for the first few pics are Dutch photographers Cees Jongkind and Frits Lambert.

more pics









These next are from the Canada at War website...





here are a couple of crude drawings of the main building...

I will build the stonework out of plaster and have a lot of white metal kits for machinary. The traveling transfer crane is a kit from my railroad stash. it will be inlarged to go into the structure.
The wood is all precut basswood and will use plastic window and door castings from GrantLine.
Here are some in progress pics....

I found some great looking cast plaster wall sections from C.C. Crow and thought it would be easy to cut out the window and door openings and use several of these sections to build up the walls!



It may be for some people but not me After breaking the first few attempts several times I finally decided to make up a mold of the last remaining unbroken section.



Using this master, cast a bunch and joined four sections together, enough area for the wall and secured them to a flat broad. Then I cut out the openings and trimmed the roof line and sides. Still had some cracks but at lest it was still together. I then used this "master" to make up a mold of the desired wall section.







The joys of building with plaster.....



Pics of the gantry crane kit...







and a pic of the machinary castings and doors and windows..





After many moons this is where it stands....

















This will be the area that shows damage..



this outside staircase will get beat up....



So up till now this has a straight forward build. Everything is neat and clean. The challenge ahead is realistic damage. Please feel free to comment as always... Randy

Once again Randy, this is [auto-censored]ing nuts. And I can care less for the auto censor, there are no words to describe this

wow this is impressive work, i look forward to seeing more.

Why damage it???? I can't believe for a minute that every building in Europe was either in disrepair or damaged from the war.This is fantastic work just as it is............Al

This is so fantastic... My god... Don't know where to start... what have you used as the engine that powers the whole production line? Who makes the machinery castings? I assume this is 1:35 scale?
I'm so looking forward how this progresses.

Please don't make us wait too long

Would you mind going into more detail about how you made your molds did your casting. That is very cool, I'd be interested to know what products etc. that you used. Thanks!

Just amazing craftmanship. Hope it's 1/35th so the machinery is available. No matter the scale, this is beautiful.

Already very impressive! I'll be watching this one

Excellent work, man. Talk about detail! Fine fine work.

Fantastic. The machinery and the way it's set up - awesome.

Hello Folks, I am sorry, thought I posted the scale in the beginning. It is "Braille Scale" Somewhere in that murky area between 1/76 and 1/72. ..





The fig is 1/76.......

Sean, Thanks for commenting and yeah I'm still a little nuts

Thank you Luke

Hi Al, I agree but after not even putting a bullet hole in that back area staghound I really want to try some battle damage!

Robert and Bob , the machinary is a mix of Rio Grande Models, American Model Builders and Jaks Enterprises. all available from www.caboosehobbies.com They are supposed to be HO scale 1/87 but so much of the detail stuff in that scale is a bit over sized that it works well here. Bob, there is alot of great machinary stuff in 1/48 or 1/20 in the train world ,there might be something you can use.

Thank you Matthew, glad you like it

Thanks m3arm5!

Randy

Randy, once again you stun us with your attention to details! I know I'm getting boring after your Staghound build so I won't say again how fantastic your work is...

Cheers!
Stef

This is some truly magnificent work! Can't wait to see it progress. The fact that it is braille scale is hard to believe given the details and quality of the finishing.. Excellent work so far!

Lookin really nice Randy, there is one item i see you may want to look into, growing up around old farm machinery, I saw alot of old steam tractors an pictures form pre WW2 factories, where the drive belt had a twist in it an was loosely mounted. Other than that keep up the great job.

Yo Randy,

Whow!! What a project...nice build up of al the elements. Good story...Belguim?? Are you certain?? I'am curious.

Yes the machinery is great and nice painted to...

Go on...I follow!

Grt Nico

Hi Randy.
That is a nice entry to the diorama board!
Some great ideas in there and well done craftmanship.
Really worth follwing!

Cheers
Claude

Randy all I can say is,"WOW" !!! I'll follow this one. Thanks for sharing. Tom

Hello All,

Matthew, Sorry I did not answer you yesterday, checking to see if I had any old pictures when making those molds. I don't but the methods and materials that I use are very simple.
I glue my master to a flat surface large enough that a low box can be built around it. This only needs to be about an 1/8th of an inch higher than the thickest point of the master. You then fill this with your rubber compound.
I use a very cheap latex rubber that is sold by craft stores. It is like very thick house paint and you brush it on. I use several thin layers that i let dry inbetween. I do not use any mold release on the master. The only thing I do is dilute the first coat of rubber with water so it fills any small details. This whole process takes about a week to produce a mold about 1/2 inch thick...






thank you Brett for your comments.

Stefan, Thank you for looking in on this one

Thomas, Glad you like it!

Duane, Good catch on the belts, I'll have to try to fix the ones I can still get to! At least try an put some slack into them.

Hello Nico, Thank you for commenting here. Please understand that I would never presume that I'm am building some accruate representation of Belgium I know just enough about your country to be dangerous This is just a way to display some early war armor that I really like. That being said I really appreciate any help on finding online ref. Someone already sent me a pm with some neat photos of Sedan and the rail station.

Not much of an update today, have been looking at the photos that I posted and realized that I do not like everything all lined up and square in regards to how the structure is on the base....




Will change this up an angle the building on the base.....



Another thing I'm thinking about is the window wall.....






When I put this wall up I do lose some really great viewing angles looking through the building, Thinking about leaving it off and ending the base at the edge of the building on that side. I would like thoughts on that.

Working on the small lift that will be used for hand carts hauling supplies between floors. It will be housed in the "damaged "portion of the building...





That is all for now, thanks for looking in and commenting! Randy

Randy, Even more impressive as brail scale. Yeh, the r/r section at the L.H.S. gets a good look over, lots of goodies threre to use in dios and buildings.

Yo Randy,

Leave the window wall as it is...that will attract the viewer to look true the windows right in to the factory.

Greetz Nico

Hello Claude, Thank you for commenting..

Thanks Tom, Glad you like it

Nico, you make a good point

Randy

Truly awe-inspiring work Sir, just plain awesome!
rb

This project is already a winner.
Being small scale only adds to the quality. This could be a great feature with lots of technique points. Keep up the good posts and tke lots of otes and the feature will almost write itself.

Good work.