East African Garrison Post

Today I put the finishing touches to the last of the European structures for my East African building set.

This is intended as a German garrison post or Bomb. I wanted it to contain the regional headquarters building, a barracks, a kitchen, a gatehouse and an observation tower. It has to be entirely enclosed in a high wall. 

The outer wall is a solid white washed surface, but on the inside I  wanted as many different textures as possible. To achieve this mix of textures I chose to give the headquarters building, with its inbuilt observation tower, a stone surface, so after making the cardboard basic shape I covered it entirely with stone face plasticard. The windows were made from plasticard strips. The observation tower was perhaps bigger than it should be, but it was made to have a 50mm by 50mm interior so that a fighting element could fit inside it. The cover over the observation tower was made from matchsticks.

Below, the headquarters buildung before fixing to the main base with the observation tower cover removed.

 

 

Above, the headquarters in position with the observation tower cover in place.

The kitchens were built open to the front. The ovens and worktable were detailed using plasticard off cuts.

 

The barrack room had a stone base with timber and corrugated iron face, giving the right amount of texture.

 

The gatehouse was the simplest structure with a large wooden door. 

 

The surface of the courtyard was created by applying a fine sand. By chance the sand I used was black sand from the west coast of the North Island - non-New Zealand residents will not be aware of this, but many of the west coast beaches feature a fine iron sand with a black appearance. The advantage of this black sand that all I needed to do to provide a final finish was to lightly dry brush some light brown over the surface.

 

 

Finally to finish the whole model I applied some water stains and some foliage on the outside wall.