15mm representation of the northern end of the Arnhem road bridge held by the men of Lt-Col Frost 2nd Para Battalion and 1st Brigade HQ during operation Market Garden, September 1944.

Building this was something that was on my mind since I was 16 years of age and now at age 61, after watching “A Bridge Too Far” for the umpteenth time I was finally able and willing to do it. 🙂

My plan was to create a playable diorama as historically correct as possible but after weeks of searching in books and on the internet for decent photo’s I came to the conclusion that this would be very hard to do. The entire area was destroyed during the battle and very few photo’s of the buildings before the battle exist. However, I found enough to give me a very good idea of the layout and style of the buildings but this also led me to the conclusion that I would have to build every building from scratch. I just don’t have the energy and motivation to do that anymore so instead I opted to use 3D printed buildings, similar in style to the historic buildings. I think this worked well and I am pleased with the result.

Storage room for the finished board was also something that I had to keep in mind. I have room to store a board of 122 cm by 122 cm so I was somewhat limited by that too. I could not represent a couple of buildings that were there in reality but fortunately this does not take away the “historically correct feel” of the board if you know what I mean.

So here we are now. Still very much in the “work in progress” phase. Still a lot to do but I will get there, slowly but surely.

All buildings, except for the brown one that I scratch built are 3D resin prints. The two stairs towers of the bridge are FDM printed. The bridge itself is scratch built out of MDF, insulation foam board, cardboard and balsa wood. The 3D printed bridge railings I designed in Sketch up. The sidewalks and roads are cut out of Faller Decorplaat, Klinkers 170825 (sorry, do not know the English name for it). I gave these a coat of grey tinted Modge Podge to make them very durable and then went over them with Nuln Oil to get a dept effect. So no painting, no drybrushing but still a very convincing result I think.

That is it for now. I am painting everything right now and when that is done I will tackle the gardens, open areas etc. And when all that is done I will have to paint around 400 15mm paras and Germans and dozens of vehicles and tanks. Wish me luck!