Three More Terrain Tiles

Work continues on the terrain tiles.

First up is a simple road with a short bend on the edge of a plain tile. It’s a bit boring, but a necessary piece to link the various road sections.

The second piece is a river section. One of the limitations of using a 300mm square tile with a central entry/exit point is that it is difficult to avoid a dead straight river. So in an effort to soften that look, this tile is one of two that will have a deep bend along the length. While it involved a bit more effort than the first piece, it too was a relative simple build.

The third piece is also a river piece with a bridge crossing it. While that in itself would have been a relatively simple, but I complicated the build by wanting to have an inter-changeable wooden or stone bridge available to span the river.  This meant building two bespoke bridges and fitting them as seamlessly as possible into the tile.

The wooden bridge was a pretty simple structure built from match sticks. Making this fit into the tile was a relatively easy task. 

The stone bridge was a different story. Making the sides from thin card that matched the profile of the riverbed and banks was simple enough. 

It was then backed by a piece of 6mm foamboard to give support for the roadway.

Normally I would use an epoxy putty to create the stonework, but I had none on hand and with the current lockdown restrictions was unlikely to obtain any for some time. What I did have on hand was some air dry clay which was quickly put to good use. First making the inside faces.

Then the outside faces.

Then the roadway was fitted, but not yet textured.

Here I paused work on the bridge because to fit it seamlessly into the terrain profile I needed to wait until the main work on the tile was completed. The basic form of the tile is as below.

To create the near seamless fit for the bridge I put some cling film over the roadway of the finished tile (well almost finished - the water effect will be completed after the bridges are settled) and then used air dried clay (reinforced by some steel mesh that has being laying around waiting for a use) to create the bridge approaches. 

When that was dry the road surface was added and the whole bridge painted and some foliage added around the ends to help conceal joint with the banks.

I wanted an additional feature around the bridge and decided on some rocks and fast flowing water, not rapids, just some foaming water. For the rocks I used the air dry clay again, pressed into a Woodlands Scenics rock mould that had been kicking around for years and painted appropriately. The rapidly flowing water was created from toilet tissue mixed with thinned PVA then highlighted with a bit of white paint and  the clear water effect brushed over top. I also put some grass and foliage along the banks.

Here then is the finished item showing the two bridges in place.

Lastly, I had been planning on buying some more of the plastic trays I use to store figures,  but the plan was to buy them at the end of August. Then along came our current lockdown, that is now at day fifty-something, and the number of figures painted waiting for storage is mounting up alarmingly, as you can see below, and now a  total 344 figures and two guns as below are without a permanent home. Note that the back section of the image is deliberately blurred to conceal elements of my undisclosed project.