Liberation, Italy 1944

[Marcello]

Tim,
this is a fantastic duo. Being Italian and having spent vast majority of my youth between Tuscany and Umbira, I really appreciate how accurate your buildings are.I f I have to find a minimal mistake (relatively speaking and easily forgettable), the civic number of the house is not very accurate of the era. But it will go perfectly un-noticed. Excellent job

[TIM FORSTER]

Thanks Marcello!

I particularly appreciate any praise (or criticism) from those who are more familiar than I with the Italian landscape.

Like the overly elaborate church doorway I will just have to put the number plaques down to 'artistic licence'..!

[TIM FORSTER]

The roof tiles

Soon after I started this project I came to realise that one of the biggest challenges that lay ahead was going to be the roof tiles. Many Mediterranean houses - and certainly, from what I could see from photographs, almost all Italian ones of the WWII era - had a distinctive style of terracotta roof tile with a curved profile slightly tapering to their bottom end.

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At first I could find no source for these tiles in 1/35, but then I came across these moulds sold by Diorama Debris:

1:35 Scale Spanish Barrel Roof Tiles Mould (1350047) from http://www.dioramadebris.co.uk/135-s...50047-50-p.asp

To my knowledge, this is the only way to make these tiles in the authentic manner out of real terracotta plaster. I tried one of these moulds and, after a bit of practice, it worked very well. But it was very time-consuming. By a stroke of luck I happened to mention my dilemma to someone at a model show and - hey presto! - he came up with a supply of ready-cast tiles (I believe made from the same moulds) at a very reasonable price. I'm not sure he is still making them, so I won't name him for now. Let's just say that I was a very lucky guy because - as you will already have seen - I needed hundreds of the things..!

Making the actual roof structures themselves was hardly easy either. Because I had plans to add interior lighting and other details, I needed to ensure that each roof was removable - and strong enough not to warp once in place. The answer was to make a false internal structure out of foam board that slotted into each of the buildings. To this I then added the roof from thick card before starting to lay the tiles.

Here is the one for the main church roof...

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For this roof and that of the houses I used a style which I had seen in Tuscany where the half-round tiles are interspersed with flat tiles of roughly equal width. This way I would be using half as many tiles for the same area of roof.

To give the impression of the flat tiles laid between the others I used strips of brown card laid from the bottom up with a slight overlap. The half-round tiles were then laid in rows on top of them over a ribbon of Bostick glue. This sets pretty quickly - but not so fast that you don't have time to adjust the rows if needed.

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Last of all I added the ridge tiles and bedded these in with Magic Sculp to represent the render which would be used in real life.

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The steeple roof, which was actually the first that I tackled, was made slightly differently.

I began by building a triangular inner frame from foam board, mounted this on a square balsa wood base and then covered the structure with thin basswood. This was glued and tacked in place to give it a slightly concave profile - a little 'sag' - and then some suitable holes for damage added. This belfry would have been an observation post for the defending Germans and thus a prime target for the Allied guns.

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The tiles were laid more closely together than on the other roofs (see the reference picture above) because this crowded look seemed to suit the smaller structure better then the more widely spaced variety. For this style there are no flat tiles - only more barrel tiles laid beneath the others, but upside down (so the curve faces up).

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However, rather than do this the authentic way (and thus use twice as many of my precious tiles), I cheated by adding the upside-down tiles only at the very bottom of the roof.

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It's a bit messy, I admit, but - hey - this church had already stood for quite a long time before the Allies started taking pot-shots at it.

Finally, I added cement render from Magicsculp and - as a piece de resistance - a little finiale from a photo etch set called 'WEATHER VANES & PUB SIGNS' (SLOF07) made for model railways by Scale Link.

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All in all, these roofs were a lot of work. But to my mind they were at least as important as the buildings that they sit above. There's just something so Italian about them! At least I hope so...

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[JR]

I find one of the pleasures of diorama building is the mission creep that inevitably occurs as the vision broadens during execution. Some really top craftsmanship here Tim, and some great ideas too. PaulE

Paul you are right on that .
Tim .
Nice to see this again , I remember those bells and the church tower roof well .
John

[Guest]

Excellent work!! I love the way you are detailing the entire set :thumb2:

[TIM FORSTER]

I'm glad someone apart from me is finding this interesting!

The chimney

I decided long ago that my building needed a chimney but I hadn't really thought how to finish it. It turns out that Italian chimneys are as varied as the rest of their buildings, but eventually I came across this picture:

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Well, that was all the inspiration I needed. So I set about creating my own 'mini Acropolis'.

The bricks were laid as far as possible like real bricks and fixed together using a mixture of PVA and Deluxe Materials Perfect Plastic Putty. The result is a little slap happy - and I'm not going to make any jokes at the expense of Italian builders here - but I think with a little weathering it will look fine.

The chimney 'roof' roof was built, as all my others were, using a base of plastic card, covered with brown card and then the tiles were glued in place with Bostick or UHU. And that was my last bit of tiling!

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[rtfoe]

Hi Tim, great to see this in action again. The roof tiles are similar to the roof tiles found in the old part of Malacca town built by the Dutch after taking over from the Portuguese. You can make them from balloon rods. I've only used them for the top section of my roof building that is still being constructed.



Your dio is turning out to be an epic even without the vehicals and unpainted ground work. :thumb2:

Cheers,
Richard

[scottie3158]

Tim,

This is a great build your attention to detail is superb. It is all those little things that make this so good. Many thanks for the descriptions and how too's.
it is not to you read things like this that you realise that half these things are possible or available. Keep it up

[TIM FORSTER]

Hi Tim, great to see this in action again. The roof tiles are similar to the roof tiles found in the old part of Malacca town built by the Dutch after taking over from the Portuguese. You can make them from balloon rods. I've only used them for the top section of my roof building that is still being constructed.

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Your dio is turning out to be an epic even without the vehicals and unpainted ground work. :thumb2:

Cheers,
Richard

Thanks Richard. I've missed the post on your dio. Can you post a link?

[TIM FORSTER]

Tim,

This is a great build your attention to detail is superb. It is all those little things that make this so good. Many thanks for the descriptions and how too's.
it is not to you read things like this that you realise that half these things are possible or available. Keep it up

Thanks Scottie. I don't claim to be an expert and I'm always learning - usually from my own mistakes!

[rtfoe]

Hi Tim,

You haven't missed the post to the dio as it was in the old MM site called David & Goliath. I haven't started a thread here to continue it as it's been sidelined while I concentrate on Peleliu the Pacific themed dio for this coming Penang show competition.
Will likely start it after the show. Dios like yours ignite enthusiasm for big dio making and my D&G is comparatively large compared to the smaller ones I've done lately.

Cheers,
Richard

[JR]

Tim.
Just checking in, .....… great work. Your interpretation of those chimney stacks is spot on , Italian builders it seems don't bother much on finesse do they.:smiling2:
Having said that anyone who has laid, or attempted to lay
tiles made that way will attest to the fact that they are not constant in shape. Resulting in varying amounts of mortar. .Pantiles laid on a frame of unregularised timbers have same appearance..
Carry-on Tim, perhaps we should just have a forum of buildings, now that would be something!
John.

[TIM FORSTER]

I'm going to leave the buildings for a while (they are almost finished, apart from a few details like fitting the windows and shutters, which I will return to later) and move on to the groundwork.

The ravine and bridge

Landscaping is, for me, one of the most relaxing parts of the build. This is because there are far fewer 'rules' in nature than there are in architecture. OK, so it's important to make everything look geographically 'appropriate', but even here there are usually exceptions. For example, you might associate a palm tree with the desert and other hot climates - but I have seen them growing happily in the Western coast of Scotland. And, of course, wherever man imposes himself on the landscape in the form of roads and bridges, there are certain things that look right - and certain things that don't.

Above all, I was looking to impart a sense of drama to my diorama - beyond the buildings, vehicles and figures - and the groundwork was simply another way to achieve this. The most obvious way was to make a ravine which cuts across the landscape and a bridge to carry to road into the town. This not only provides visual interest - the drop in height and the chance to add rocks and foliage within - but also helps to break up the scene into different segments of interest. So the area to the left of the bridge, which is actually quite a small part of the total area, becomes the 'outskirts' of the town, the bridge the way into it and the larger area to the right the town itself.

By now I had also settled on the following vehicles: a Fiat Topolino (in German service) crashed into the field on the left, a Universal Carrier stopped on the bridge and a knocked-out Stug in front of the church.

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I should say at once that all of this was new to me - I have never modelled either a bridge or a ravine before.

As far as the bridge itself is is concerned, I had a look on-line and it's fair to say that there is quite a good selection available in 1/35. However, most were either too big, too formal - or too flimsy (e.g. made of wood). In my part of Italy bridges are generally built solidly of stone and usually arched. Above all, I wanted my bridge to fit the scene. This meant that it certainly had to look big enough to take the Carrier (not so much of a problem) but also, potentially, the Stug, which had been moving towards it when it shed a track. And yet it also had to be quite small...

The sides for the bridge were made in much the same way as my church. Each side was cut to shape from two layers of foam board (in the end I made the parapet only one layer thick) and then covered with Das before some relief was carved in. The walls were kept removable from the base so that I could work on them more easily.

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The smaller one is on the 'upstream' side (i.e. the one facing the back of the diorama) so it is smaller to take account of the narrower ravine at that point.

As discussed at the beginning of this blog, the advantage of the insulation board was that I was able to roughly cut away the ravine very quickly and even leave in place the basic shape of the bridge. This also meant that, as I developed the bridge sides, I could simply carve away the landscape to allow them to slot into place.

Eventually, when I had reached the stage of adding the ground texture to the diorama (which I will cover later), I created the effect of the stone surface of the bridge 'floor' showing through in places. This was achieved by pushing square cobbles (from M.A.N. Models) into the Das surface and adding a thin slurry of diluted plaster so that only a few could be seen.

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As my ideas evolved I decided to place a small building on the left side of the bridge. The little square building is a delightful plaster casting from the French firm Mark 35. It's supposed to be a covered well. The original casting had stone texture all round, but I partially covered it with Das clay to make it look like a typically Italian building with chipped render.

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I then had the idea that it might serve as a guard house and remembered that I had an old Italeri Checkpoint kit with a lifting barrier. As you will see, I ultimately decided to replace the barrier with a superior one from Plus Models and took the idea one stage further by having the barrier broken in two as if to represent the moment of 'liberation' (my title and theme).

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In my next posting I will deal with the ravine itself...

[JR]

Tim .
I love to see something envolve like this, the way ideas are formed in how the diorama is going to proceed . You start off with an idea and it just runs , great work on the buildings and the road way
John .

[TIM FORSTER]

Tim .
I love to see something envolve like this, the way ideas are formed in how the diorama is going to proceed . You start off with an idea and it just runs , great work on the buildings and the road way
John .

Quite! And as you and I both know, John, the bigger the diorama the more 'evolution' goes on... and on...