I haven't done any work on the layout for sometime because I've been hijacked. Not a totally unpleasant experience but totally unexpected. My partner is into Doll's houses and belongs to a local 'Miniatures Group'. I haven't been interested but occasionally I have provided a bit of technical assistance with the manufacture of a few things.

Last October they decided they were going to commemorate the First World War by building a model of the trenches and I suddenly started to get interested. I joined the group and got hooked on working in 1/12 scale. It's so big after 00 gauge.

I got to make a load of Lee Enfield rifles some with bayonets and all with slings and triggers, lots of cart wheels, mobile kitchens, food limber and a mine tunnel. My proudest moment was finishing a model of a 13 pounder artillery piece.

At this point I should tell you that everything is made from things you would normally throw away. The only things we have bought are some LEDs, a bit of MDF as a base and some brown paint and polymer clay. A few things like the bicycle and chickens are left over from previous projects. Although I am at the moment making a new bicycle to replace the one on the model.

Before we go any further let me give you a taste of what I'm talking about.





This is an overall view of the model which measures 6ft long by 2ft wide.

The mobile kitchens are made from giant Lego blocks.





This is a view of the middle of the trench from the rear. That's a pigeon in the puddle just in case you were wondering.




There are about twenty rats somewhere all made by us.







We tried to make it look busy.





A very unhappy Australian arrives at the mine entrance.




You can't read it from here but those boxes are stamped explosives hence the soldier leaning on the 'no smoking' sign next to them.




This is how they dug through the clay thirty feet down without making any noise.





The gun and ammunition limber where modelled from photographs. I didn't make the empty cases they were kindly donated by our local rifle club. The gun is mostly made from an old garden wind chime and various bits of metal I found lying around in the garage.




The cart wheels are made from cardboard circles and cocktail sticks.




The mincer is made from a T.V. coaxial cable plug, the top of a plastic cotton reel, a steel nut and various bits from a wooden clothes peg. The large saucepans are the bottoms of 35mm  film cannisters. We had to carefully arrange them so the recycling signs didn't show.




The strange looking objects hanging up on the extreme left are gas masks.


I hope this has given you a flavour of what I've been involved in for the last nine months. All the soldiers, 49 of them, were made by my partner,  there are some grumpy expressions on some of them and she did have difficulty making young soldiers, but it is the first time she has ever attempted something like this, so I think she did jolly well. She also hand made all the uniforms.

Most of the woodwork in the duckboards and walls are wooden coffee stirrers.

This is a particular part of the Western Front called 'Hill 60' where our local regiment served for a while and is part of the area where the allies tunnelled under the enemy lines to place explosives.

I hope you find our efforts entertaining, I have learnt some skills which I hope will help with the layout which I shall get back to as soon as I've finished this bicycle.

Please ask any questions you feel like.

Best regards
Chris

Minor nitpick, I would expect to see all wearing tin hats not just a few, apart from that very realistic.

Hi Mike

Thanks for looking.

Interesting point. We had difficulty deciding exactly what time to model during the four years of the war. The 'Brodie' tin helmet wasn't patented until 1915 and wasn't on generally issue until the middle of 1916 which is about half way through the war. So during '14 and '15 they wore their normal caps and died from a lot of head injuries. In fact before they were issued to everybody, they drew a tin hat out of stores if they were on guard duty and returned it afterwards.

Unfortunately, we knew that most photographs and films showed a lot of helmets because early in the war photography was in its infancy and there aren't so many pictures; so we guessed that everybody would expect helmets. But the artillery piece is from the very early part of the war so all I can say is that we tried to cover everything and average it out over the whole four years.

I hope that answers your point.

Chris

it certainly answers mine ,I never knew about the tin hats before,often wondered why they fought in caps,,thanks
:thumbs;-):cool:

That is cracking! My wife is also into 1/12 dolls houses in total we have four and a box room in the house, so I know how easy it is to get side tracked. I agree it is very easy to get carried away and it's great fun.

I like this a lot