A Bridge to the Future?

An lovely alternate view that shows the Holsten Bridge, Holsten Gate, and the salt warehouses at left, which housed various retail clothing stores when I last visited with the Grand Duchess in 2009.

The Holsten Bridge, ca. 1800.

After several months away from hobby activities -- The spring and summer simply got away from me. -- I finally purchased a package of 10 small sheets of foamcore craftboard from our old friends at Amazon. The aim is to construct a bridge based on the old illustrations above, the Holsten Bridge across the River Trave into the old city center of Hansestadt Lübeck in northern Germany. Probably my favorite place in that country. . . although Bremen and Hamburg are close seconds. I've always felt very at home in these cities for some odd reason.

But I digress! Let's talk model bridges.

I find that many commercially available model/toy bridges have too much extreme swoop, or arch to them, sitting like odd warts atop the table. I understand why that is, of course, since typical wargame tables are completely flat, lacking, as they do, the depth and undulations of real life terrain. Sandtables anyone? In any case, I'll try to keep the planned structure fairly low key while preserving the impression of four or five arches underneath if possible.

That might be easier said than done. We'll have to see. A simplified, preliminary build might be in order to check measurements and dimensions, in much the same way that model railroad hobbyists approach their scratch-built structures.

Materials will, in any case, consist primarily of the foamcore along with balsa and thin card as needed. Aiming for something in the neighborhood of 14-16" (maybe 18"), possibly in two or three sections, by 3-4" wide when finished. Should be an interesting project to get my feet back into the water so to speak.

Now, why a town bridge? Well, I have lately developed an itch for a solo refight of Sittangbad (at some point), and I believe that there was a bridge in need of demolition although I must consult the copy of Charge! over on the shelf to confirm that. I constructed a fanciful looking bridge many years ago, which looks like it might be at home in Prague given the steep roof pitch on the two towers at either end. And while that was an interesting exercise in scratch-building back in the winter of 2006, it has never been wide enough for more than a footbridge. It worked when my early 1/72 plastics figures were still singly based, but multiple bases of 25-30mm, or 1/56-1/60 figures are simply too tall and wide for that early modelling effort.

Hmm, might have to cobble together a small wharf too come to think of it since we're talking Sittangbad, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Surprise, surprise.

No firm timeline on any of this as yet, you understand, since the fall looks like it will be very busy with work-related stuff, but ideally I would like to set up and play the game in December during the Christmas period. Of course, I'll invite the Young Master to join me, but, at almost 15, playing toy soldiers with Dad isn't cool anymore. You know how it is. It's all Flight Simulator, Minecraft, and, in his own words, "hot chicks" at the moment. Hmm. Gotta talk to him about that last bit though.

By the way, Young Paul begins high school in less than three weeks! Where does the time go? It seems like just yesterday that I was handling his 11pm and 2am feedings, so the Grand Duchess could get some uninterrupted sleep. A challenging first couple of months to say the least. Whew!

-- Stokes

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

Rob said…

You are correct, there is a bridge that one side needs to destroy after salvaging as much of their supplies as possible. I refought Sittangbad with my SSMs, I was the attacker. I played a blinder, or so I thought, inflicting a big defeat on my opponent for little loss only to be put in my place when the bridge was blown up. I had totally lost sight of my objective and had spent far too much time crafting what I thought was a tactical masterclass. An object lesson in the primacy of the operational over the tactical.
PS my bridges are made from foamboard but functional rather than decorative - I'll see if I have some photos I can send.

5:14 AM

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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