Old Rastrickian

Thanks for the comments guys. Actually this isn't my smallest cased diorama by far. I built others in these little pine boxes with glass front which they sell in Wilkinsons. They are only 5.5 x7 inches but still ok for a few 1/35 figures or single 1/72 vehicles. I find dust is really bad for dioramas and once on you can't remove it without causing damage. So before I build stuff these days I think first 'where is this going to go?' The benefit of these little boxes is that you can put them on the wall with picture hooks or angle brackets and they don't take up floor space like display cabinets.

It's actually a stony track - made up of....stony soil. The pics don't show it so well as I used my phone because it has a better depth of field. I have tried various techniques in the past to reproduce untarmaced roads and all have their flaws. in the end sieved soil is about the best (make sure you microwave it to kill any bugs!) I tried a spay-on textured paint for the road originally but was unhappy with the result, it was a good rendition of a road covered in stone chippings which would probably suit a model railway but too well-made for a Normandy farm track or lane.

First of all I selected a base from 2cm polystyrene packaging(waste not , want not) to fit snugly inside the case. then I built it up with spray on polystyrene builders foam (first time I have used this after seeing railway modelling buffs do it on Youtube) Then I smoothed it off using plaster-impregnated bandage. That gives the basic shape which is to be a sunken road on a hillside overlooking a ruined farm building. the case is very deep so I wanted to maximise the depth to get more stuff in basically. next I added base colour and sprayed on a textured paint for the road. I then decided that the road wasn't convincing. I may have looked ok on a railway model in suburban England but not a loose surfaced road in 1944 Normandy. The edge of the road which was to form the base of the hedgerow was added by adding scrapes of the spray filler with PVA glue.

fit a little After deciding to use up some spare sprues from Armourfast and PSC I found that I couldpiece of Normandy into a small terrarium from a well known Scandinavian household store (JYSK not the other one!). the Armourfast Cromwell was looking forlorn after I used up one sprue for an ARV and decided that it could only go on a diorama on its own due to its overscale appearence when put next to my Revell Cromwells. I had some equally mismatched ESCI figures which are well detailed but also overscale for my other Normandy dios. Many of the 'action' poses are useless for most scenes but I discovered I could cut of their weapons and equipment with a scalpel and add it to other more suitably posed figures (some of them the old Airfix/Dapol railway figures which are ideal 1/72 and too big for 00 Gauge) I tried various 1/72 vehicles including the PSC M5 halftrack, a bren carrier, daimler Dingo from a white metal kit and a Humber scout car also from a metal kit. You can see the difference between the huge Armourfast Cromwell and the PSC one in the pics. Armourfast Cromwell: PSC Cromwell: PSC M5 halftrack and Humber scout car Daimler & Bren carrier I finally decided on the Armourfast Cromwell and the carrier (but added more stowage since these pics) the diorama roughly represents the actions of !st Polish Armoured Division on Mt Ormel in late August 1944 when they held the neck of the Falaise pocket closed. I was inspired to use this scenario because the hill has an embedded lane on its steep slopes.

We all have an extensive stash of kits in our lofts, garages, under the bed or wherever, but even if we hope one day to build them all , what about the leftovers? I was thinking this a while back when I unearthed an Armourfast Cromwell sprue and a few other unused sprues from other quick-builds which had donated one example to some other project. I decided to use this and other left over bits and pieces up in a micro-diorama inside a plant terrarium which was equally unemployed. Now the Armourfast Cromwell isn't all that bad as far as shape goes, it does lack some necessary details which can be added, but the main issue is its size. Putting it simply it is a porker compared with say, the Revell 1/72 Cromwell or the PSC equivalent. This means it could only really appear in a diorama where there were no comparative vehicles in the scale. This is what I started with: The question was always going to be how much can I fit in a 12"x 10" box? watch this space...