Barn raising completed.

Well Livery Stables actually but let’s not split hairs. I’m calling this build finished.  Internally I added stalls to give cover and outside I have added some scatter terrain in the shape of straw bales (well a horse gotta eat).

The roof tiles before painting

The roof was covered with home-made shingles (timber tiles if you haven’t come across the term before).  These were cut from cardboard as short strips with some irregularities in the tile lengths to create a nice visual effect.  I used a grey card and then painted it yellow ochre using Windsor and Newton galleria artist's acrylic paint.  Over that I painted a thinned Burnt Umber which I immediately rubbed off with tissue paper.  This darkens the yellow ochre and creates areas where lighter paint shows through, creating a worn creosote effect.  The topmost roof I did more to, but I decided that less is more and didn’t replicate the effect lower down.

And after

I then started on some scatter terrain items.  First up are straw bales.  These are simply blocks of balsa painted yellow ochre with finely chopped sisal string glued all around.  I also intend added sisal ‘straw’ into the stalls inside the stabling.  The stalls themselves are bass wood with matchstick bracing.

A few straw bales around the place add character (and cover)

With the roof off you can see the stalls I added

I have started some extra scatter terrain using DAS airdrying clay.  These will be a pile of loose straw and some bags of grain.  I'm just waiting for the clay to dry and harden at the moment to see if these have come out OK.  I am going to need more 'straw though, so you will have to excuse me as I need to nip off and start trimming sisal string into 28mm straw stems!  

Remembrance Day - I'm remembering a man I never met

It needs a bit of TLC after a century on display

 As far as I know my grandparent's generation came away from the Great War having suffered less personal loss than many of their contemporaries.  In that generation I only know of one combat death; the man who would have been my Great Uncle had he lived, or perhaps is still my Great Uncle despite my never getting to meet him.

That man was Rifleman Tom Hartley service number 26979 of the 1/6th King's (Liverpool) Regiment killed on 30th November 1917 aged just 20.  He has no known grave but is commemorated on panel 4 of the Cambrai Memorial at Louverval.   I have seen only one photograph of him, and he looked shockingly young almost a child in a military uniform.  I do have the bronze plaque issued to his parents after the war which hung on my grandmother's wall until her death when it passed to my mother and then to me.  Not much to remember a life he never got to live.

De Lancy is expanding

The town has added a livery stable courtesy of Warbases’ Cactus Creek buildings range. I also thought an improvement to town sanitation was required so ordered an outhouse as well.

The Livery Stable kit comes as three large MDF sheets and one smaller one, but without any assembly instructions.  The kit includes are some quite thin parts such as window frames and roof supports, so it’s important to use a craft knife to help break these fragile parts from the MDF sheet.  Assembly was fairly straight forward even without an instruction sheet but it’s worth dry fitting all the parts before reaching for the wood glue.  

I started by glueing all of the window frames to the walls as it would have been near impossible later.  I then built the main four walls of the stable (hint make sure to get the hay loft floor in place at the same time) before fitting that assembly to the base.  I then built the roof of the hay lost which was the hardest part of the build as getting the roof panels flush with the supports took a bit of brute force!  This simply sits on top of the hayloft.  I then added the two lower roof panels simply clicking these into place so I can access the interior more easily.  The supports for the roof panels to the outside areas were then placed and the panels clicked in place which essentially completed the build.

To fully complete it I want to cut a hatch in the floor of the hayloft and add stalls on the ground level.  I will also need to create some fencing for a corral and a couple of water troughs.

Now we have somewhere to stable the horses

It’s a lovely MDF kit for the price point.  Not as detailed internally as a Sarissa Precision building but more than good enough for what I need and as I said I can add those details later.  The roof panels don’t have any detail etched into them which I suspect is deliberate to allow a printed paper roof texture of your choice to be used which is my next job.  All in all, £20 well spent.

The outhouse was a much simpler build consisting of four walls, two roof panels and a square former to keep the walls square.  There is also a large circular base that I probably won’t use.  The only slightly tricky bit is getting the two roof panels placed correctly as one has to slightly overlap the other at the apex.  Given that every old west building would have an outhouse (or more for hotels and saloons) I can see that I’m going to making a fair few of these.  For variation I will probably use a couple of other outside buildings from other Warbases ranges.  There is an Eastern European outside toilet and a couple of small sheds that will work.

I’m led to believe that the Cactus Creek range is intended to provide a lower cost option than the competitions offerings.  They meet that objective by offering less details in the model.  To be honest given the number of buildings even a small Old West township will need I can live with that as the trade off on cost.  I’m going to be using some buildings from other ranges alongside these ones, after all we wouldn’t want to start a range war…or would we?