15mm Terrain progress

Hi folks,

This week has consisted of trying to make more progress on my infantry, but I've been getting distracted a bit by terrain!

Thankfully I did get a big chunk of the infantry blocking it done last night, so I'm still on track. But I also managed to 'finish off' a couple of the buildings I got at Partizan.

First up, a small railway station and a barn from Ironclad Miniatures. These are resin kits and come in a couple of parts (building and roof for the barn, and roof, building and platform for the railway station).

Scale wise, I'm pretty happy although the barn might be a bit small compared to some of the other buildings. The doors seem to be the same height, so will have to see how it looks once all set up.

And for scale with one of my vehicles - perhaps it's being used as a first aid post!

Ironclad Miniatures 'Eastern Front' railway station - if I had the station on a base board it would sit a bit higher against the Battlefront railway track. 

The station with the roof off! The building itself is very stylistically similar to the Battlefront signals box I have. 

Ironclad Miniatures 'Normandy Barn' - I added some ivy using some leaf flock I have. 

For scale with some of my recently finished infantry. 

The barn was very easy to paint. I just sprayed both models and roofs with a dark yellow primer, painted the stonework on the barn beige brown and washed with AP soft tone, then drybrushed up with Desert Yellow. I did the door and window sills with straight Desert Yellow and the doors a random green. The windows I just painted in black as I didn't think there would be glass used in this outbuilding. The ivy was an afterthought but I think it came out ok.

The station was similar, but I tried to use the same tones as the other buildings I have for the render, and a bit more reddy brown for the stonework/brickwork. I decided it would have a lead roof, as went for a drybrushed up grey (again, keeping to the same rough roof colour as my other buildings).

For FoW, both buildings will fit in one medium and one small FoW base - so not as big as the FoW train station (which can hold 4 mediums, I think) but the model was only £7.50 and another £2 for the platform. The barn was also £7.50.

Ironclad do have a range of other scenery options - I really really liked the look of their 15mm resin fencing.

I also used the time today with my background setup to get some pictures of my church with the other items I have been working on. Namely the Tiger Terrain walls and Blotz MDF gravestones. The surface was a bit bumpy, as my green cloth was folded up due to the space (I really need to get a different matt as well, one with static grass or a nicer effect rather than just felt).

These Tiger Terrain walls are excellent - and seeing them with the church has actually made me reconsider painting the church. It's not as dark as I remember it being and to be honest the whole setup worked well. I may need to order a few more wall sections and possibly more gravestones just to fill up the space a bit better. But some shrubbery and the likes would not go amiss here either.

The whole setup - plus some extra gates and corners - cost me £20.05 including postage. That was for 29 well made, detailed resin wall sections (including corners, gate posts and gates). There is no web store on the page, but I emailed the owner with the details of what I wanted and he sent a 'proper'  Paypal invoice that left me with no concerns. The items were delivered pretty quickly and communications with Stephan were excellent. I highly recommend checking out his site, as he has a range of other buildings and walls - and I'll be getting some more stuff soon, I suspect!

The gravestones are by Blotz and were the cheaper option than paying a silly amount for 4Ground ones. You get 29 15mm grave stones, which I put on FoW bases and used a little of my basing material to blend in. Then I just covered in static grass. The effect is basic, but just helps fill in the space.

I've also been experimenting with options for making the space look a bit busier.

The shrubs here are made from different shades of 'clump' stuck onto one of my old painting lolipop sticks. I'm thinking that with the sticks cut to relevant lengths they could sit along the gable ends of buildings and the likes. While not terribly realistic looking, they do look pretty good from a distance, and seem to help the buildings sit a bit better in the space.

I've still the Warbases MDF Barn to paint, just having built it today. And some buildings to finish off (those I bought from Lee).

This week I also received a load of trees - mainly Busch trees bought from Amazon. Poplars (must have Poplars for Normandy, right?!), varying sizes normal trees and from Ebay (via China) some 15mm scale 'apple' trees. The chinese trees were really cheap - less than £5 for 20 I think, but a couple of them are in poor shape. Still, the rest will help me populate some Normandy orchards! I just need to get them all based up at some point. I also got the mixed bag of Lichen as it will help fill gaps and add greenery where it's needed on the table.

The smaller sized trees will do for scattering around my town/gardens, while the larger once will do for woods and the likes. I also got some 'poplars' from a cheap site online, but they are such poor quality as to be useless. I may attempt to save them at some point with PVA and clump...

I also finished off all my outstanding wheat fields (doormat) sections - although I'm concerned that I didn't put enough thought into the cutting up of this - time and a chance to set up all the terrain - will tell!

So, still needed seems to be:

More dividing walls for inside the town
base boards for the buildings
items for gardens
pathways/lanes
more outbuildings
possibly more gravestones
more hedgeline - with some farm gate and breached hedge solution