Late War Buildings 1

One of my main wargaming interests is World War 2, especially the later 1944-5 period. Whilst perusing EBAY (as you do), I came across a few plastic railway modelling buildings going cheap and, on an impulse decided to buy them. Within a couple of weeks I had purchased a load more - around £200.00 worth!! My initial attempts at painting them led to disappointment. Using my usual dry brush methods just didn't seem to work on plastic and I started to think that I had wasted my money. Fortunately, I had just bought an airbrush to try and get a decent finish on my WW2 vehicles and decided to try it out on the buildings. Over my usual base coat of Chocolate Brown, I over-sprayed 3 extra and progressively lighter layers and was pretty pleased with the result. The advantage with the air brush is that each application is so fine that the detail isn't obscured and the smooth surface of the plastic really benefits from this method. After that it was just a question of adding the weathering and detail.

In order to get the maximum possible variety, whilst saving on space, I decided to model the buildings and any extensions (gardens usually), separately. Terrain takes up a fair bit of space, buildings not least and a fixed module is what it is once finished. This way, I can design a variety of "add ons" which take a fraction of the time to do, but make a building look different every time. Because they are very light, they can also be stacked on top of each other, which greatly helps storage. The module illustrated can either be a simple stand alone house, or, if I want more detail and a larger footprint on the table, I can add the garden.

Railway modelling buildings really do have a great deal to recommend them: they are light, detailed and can usually be picked up, ready assembled, for a decent price. The fact that many of them are manufactured by German companies also helps, as they often depict German buildings - particularly suitable for my interest in fighting late war battles.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will try and post more of them on the blog. I look forward to hearing what you think of them.