Here I have the scene planned out. I should add a road sign pointing to Arnhem and maybe a destroyed floating row boat in the water.



This is for the Commonwealth campaign



Here we have the airborne and tankers discussing the advance





Here we have one of the firefly tankers checking his watch anxiously while the other one gets ready for a smoke.

other ideas always welcomed

great dio,cant wait to see it finished.

Loooks good! Is that part of a kit or scratch built?



~ Jeff

Thanks Roy and Jeff. I'm going to re do the bridge to scratch something wider that looks more like the Nijmegen bridge. It'll be the street and front portion of bridge I envision. I put the Cromwell together the other day. Knee acl surgery was friday . The bridge you see here is by verlinden.

Can't wait to see this one finished. like the layout.
This is the battle I find the most interesting in WWII.

Your dio will come out very big if you want it to look like the Nijmegen bridge.

You might be better of using a scene placed by a smaller bridge on the route towards Arnhem. Like by the towns of Grave, Veghel or Son. There is a very common type of bridge used all over the Netherlands called a hefbrug (lift bridge) that has a T shaped suspension lift/toggle type opening function.
If I can ever figure out how to put pictures in the body of my posting I can give you an intresting picture of one of those bridges in Veghel that is reinforced with timber to hold the tanks going over it during Market Garden.

As being dutch myself I have been at most if not all of the operational areas of Market Garden.

Other than that Your dio looks great already.

Barricades and sand bag pill box's come to mind if you widen the bridge enough, demo charges being removed from under the bridge and put in the row boat might add some side interest with a glider wing or timbers floating in the river.

Really a hole lot of things you can do here Greg.
this is gonna be cool!

Thanks for any help.

This pic is how I imagine changing the dio to only seeing the street. Maybe using a forced perspective and either build just a small lower front of the bridge or somehow a photo background of the bridge???

i see where your going with it now, you need a large bridge photo of the appropriate type and angle for sure, I'll keep my eyes open for one. photographer might be a option, [enlarge a pic you find] but not sure what that would cost.
cool idea, look forward to how you work it out.

That would work great just bare in mind that there will be a slight incline/decline in the road at this point going up to the actual bridge itself.
As far as items in the water the river has a fairly strong current so anything in the water will show a small breakwave when lodged in the bottom of the river or attached to a docking pole. (like a boat)
I do not have any big enough pictures for your back ground. Maybe you can try to use a picture of the bridge in Deventer. This was the bridge used to make the A bridge to far movie an it still stands today. Or maybe even screen shots out of this movie?

Earlyer you mentioned adding a road sign. This is a great idea. All roadsigns in the Netherlands where provided by the ANWB (Dutch AAA)made of an 8 to 9 feet tall steel H beam painted overall white, with blue diagonal bright medium blue stripes around the beam going up (like on a old barber/hairdresser sign).

Eric

I just sent a photo to walgreens for a 11x14 poster for $11. Worth a try. Ill pick it upin an hour.

Well here is a photo backdrop thrown in quickly. I'm thinking of cutting the verlinden bridge down the middle and widen it out to the size of the photo. The sides won't be exact as thethe original but maybe close as iI'll get. Otherwise I'll need to just fabricate a street to match the photo instead. This may all turn out too lame but I'll try out any ideas.

Also the left side of the photo will need to be cut as the far left tank came out more as 1/35 scale

Going to use old styrofoam or foamboard to extend the road across. I'm going to use the photo. Add a road sign with Arnhem and Nijmegen on it. The cromwell tanker will be at the head of this column with his arms crossed signifying they won't go any further to the airborne troops.

nice cut job ! how did you do it?

I know this isn't your final placement but the guy sitting on the boulder is about to be crunched. Footsoldiers steer FAR away from rolling vehicles.

Your reticent Cromwell tanker is problematic. Historically, Nijmegen bridge was crossed on 21-Sept. A largish salient pushed forward and was never repelled. The battle officially ended five days later. XXX Corps was not halted at Nijmegen. Indeed their salient past the bridge was held and never lost.

Your stopped Cromwell would not reflect anything that happened in actual history.

Chris -I used a wood saw and just went for it


Roy - sorry my WIP are a little disorganized looking. The 'boulder' is just a sponge to hold up the standing figure. As far as XXX corp stopping, I was going by this BBC documentary with interviews of the people there. I think it was an overnight thing or something but the delay was long enough to allow more German reinforcements to block the road ahead. I'm sure they didn't stay stopped on the bridge but well call this a momentary stop just before settling down for the night. What I've read is there's a lot of controversy on a lot of historical things that went on in OMG. Thanks for the comments.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcQX6KA4Q5o&feature=player_detailpage#t=2253s

Ha! I'm so glad to see that first picture of the bridge - that's the Verlinden kit, right? I bought that same one at a model show for super cheap, but couldn't understand how it assembled (no instructions) ... I realize now that my confusion comes from that fact that the plaster parts were the only ones included. It looks like there's resin parts too...?

Yep. There was a bag of resin bits. I guess that explains your sale price. You could just make up some blocks. The light posts are from Tamiya I just stuck on there.

I think I'm going to reposition the airborne guys head and limbs to interact better with the tank commander. Tanks primed and base coated with overhead highlight spray.





sorry this one out of focus



minimal gear added to the Cromwell since 4 figures will be on it anyways

Maybe consider the possibility of enlarging a picture of the bridge to use as a background for your dio? Sort of a modified shadowbox? I have tried it and it gets some good results.
J

That's what I'm going for Jerry. Do you have any pics? I think I've only seen a Shep Paine one. I'm thinking either a full box with the front open, or just a blank poster on the right side wall with picture in back.

Starts looking really good Greg




Not entirely true the roads ahead where fairly tedious and often had to be reevaluated. Frequent short stops short where common to avoid getting bogged down in Dutch mud and canals or stopped on the narrow roads ahead.
By the way Greg a lot of the vehicles got scribbled on by those crazy Dutch with liberation slogans and thank you notes while going through residential areas. This was mostly done in chalk and white paint on the sides (maybe the Dutch where the first true street artists)

Hi Eric. Thanks for more ideas! I'll google those slogans next.


I think I'll have the airborne guy pointing to an Arnhem road sign and have a shouting head looking at the tank commander to help tell the story better. Also, I googled 'shadow box art war' and got some construction ideas.

Today's update: I tried Future floorwax for the first time and so far I think that stuff is so easy! So decals on and stars stenciled. I fixed the airborne figure with a screaming head and pointer finger, and then put him in a better position in the scene I think. I'll be making a Nijmegen/Arnhem road sign for the left side of the dio next. I did away with the elevated bridge and just staying flat like the picture background.

lookin cool amigo! a suggestion would be to allow a little play room with your angles as getting the photo and bridge lines looking right are an issue with this one.