Stirrings from the Attic

 I've been working away quietly in my semi-isolated state - done a fair amount of painting, refurbing and sorting-out. Here are a few quick pictures, from recent tasks which actually produced something.

I finally completed a unit of Spanish granaderos provinciales which I started (according to my notes) in March 2017 - which is not especially slow by my own standards! Figures are mostly OOP Falcata.

I replaced the crews for two French foot artillery batteries, using retouched ex-Eric Knowles Hinton Hunts - I used my original guns, which are Hinchliffe 20mm. The previous gunners were (whisper it) overscale Prinz August home-casts, very poorly painted, which resulted in these batteries being confined to the French Artillery boxfiles for many years (I'm beginning to understand how they must have felt) - now they can get out and shoot at someone.

David Crook, who saw these little chaps on my table via a Zoom visit, became quite emotional at the thought of these old soldiers getting back into action after so many years, in a form which we hope Eric would have approved of!

For my WSS collection, Goya very kindly painted some more Imperial troops - these are the two battalions of the Regiment of the Markgraf of Baden-Baden, in official shiny WSS varnish.

And I've also been working away steadily on bits and pieces for future siege games (I now have taken delivery of the Vauban's Wars rules and the posh playing cards, and am studying for my diploma). Here you see one of my handicraft evenings, cutting various length strips of 1-inch wide brown felt, to serve as forward saps in the game...

...and here is the start of a small set of mini-units for siege infantry - in this case the Peninsular War department. There is no strict requirement to re-base anything for the VW games,  but I have taken a liking to these little 12-man units, mounted in 3s on skinny little bases, which can sit comfortably in trenches and on walls and covered ways. This may seem a bit extravagant, but it gives me a really useful job for some Lamming figures that don't really have a home, and other various spares from the Deep Boxes. In particular, a good number of marching figures and "standing firing" fusiliers, which normally I don't use, can get a gig at sieges.

I'm not doing anything fancy with these - just a quick touch-up if needed, some fresh varnish and stick them on the skinny bases. Initial target is about a dozen such units for each side - normal units from my standard collection will be fine for tactical events like storms and sallies, if numbers are short!

I'm also adding to my collection of trench sections and gun emplacements, and some odd-shaped earthworks pieces to serve as a fausse braie for the medieval walls of places like Ciudad Rodrigo (Vauban never got as far as Spain, as far as I can see - the proper Vauban kit will come in very nicely for the WSS...).

Once again, I've bought in scenery pieces from that fine chap Fat Frank, still going strong in his eBay shop. You can get your trenches made to order, with or without sandbags!

I'm sure there will be more pictures soon - in the meantime, I hope you are well, and keeping safe.

Sieges - Vauban Makeover

I'm very excited about the imminent publication of Eric Burgess's Vauban's Wars rules, which should be appearing very shortly. It's appropriate that I should make some effort to prepare for this momentous event by getting on with some smartening-up work that's been in the queue since the end of last year. That's what I was doing yesterday.

Last night - just the final dry-brushing with my house "dust" colour to go, and then some heavy-duty matt varnish.

I've now arranged that the Vauban-period walls should be a similar colour to the medieval walls I have, so that I can build hybrid fortresses as necessary (I had already taken this step with the 3-D printed pieces I obtained recently), I've repainted the glacis sections so that they match the house baseboard colour and I've smartened things up generally. One of the shades of brown paint which had been used by the Terrain Warehouse people on the walls (10 years ago? More?) had reacted badly to one of my previous attempts to varnish them, and had become a strange, mottled grey-brown, so I fixed that, and cleaned up the rest of the paintwork where required.

They are now sitting while the varnish cures, then they can go back in their boxes.

Finished; today, waiting for the varnish to cure a bit before packing away.

Vauban's Bits - Painted

The new paint tins have safely arrived, so I painted the new 3D-printed barracks building this afternoon. Pleased with it. When I have a few more bits and pieces ready, I'll try to put together a picture involving more substantial pieces of fort.

With the barracks sitting above the archway, from outside the fort

And from inside the fort - the building itself has a choice of two ground floors - with and without  the archway

The scale mismatch doesn't suit everyone, but this is my gaming scale system - 1/72 scale officer of engineers standing on the 1/100 scale buildings. I've got used to it, and there are some useful advantages

And this is the alternative configuration, with the archway not running under the barrack block

Vauban's Bits

Graham, of the Scotia Albion blog, very kindly sent me some 3D-printed bits to add to my store of equipment for my siege wargames. These have been specially scaled to fit with my old (and OOP) Terrain Warehouse Vauban fort, which has always been short of a few bits and pieces - the manufacturers gave up on this range before it was complete, and subsequently were bought over by another firm whose interests lay elsewhere.

He has sent me a selection of pieces, all very interesting and thought-provoking. The most obvious show-stopper is a fine gatehouse/barracks building - this comes with some extra pieces, to provide a few alternate configurations, so that it can be a barracks and not a gatehouse. The photos are of the gatehouse set-up.

I still have to clean up the printed pieces a bit, and I was hoping to get some paint on quickly, so I could knock everyone (someone? - anyone?...) dead with pictures of the finished kit, but alas, a number of my "scenery" paint pots have set solid. I went to my local hardware store to get in some fresh paint today - got a few of them replaced (I use Dulux colour-matching sample tins), but the base colour for the brown shades was out of stock, so my two tins of Rum Caramel (shades #1 and #2) should be available tomorrow or maybe Thursday. That's fine, but since that is the undercoat colour I can't do any painting until I get them. Watch this space.

Thanks again, Graham.

Change of Scene

On Thursday I travelled down to visit Graham - he of Crann Tara Miniatures, and the very fine Scotia Albion blog - a real celebrity by my standards!

Crann Tara - '45 Rebellion - British Line Command, Marching

Apart from the social side of my visit (i.e. a chance for me to bore someone else to death) and the opportunity to see some of Graham's splendid figures, and talk about how he develops and manufactures (and sells) them, I have been fascinated by his reports of his use of 3D printers, and was very keen to know a bit more.

I had a splendid day - again, I must express my appreciation of Graham's kindness and his resilience and patience in answering my stupid questions so well and so openly. I learned a great deal, I have to say, and he very kindly printed me some samples of Vauban-type fortifications, and provided me with links to some of the more promising sites which provide files for printing (including some, such as Thingiverse, which provide the files free of charge, subject to the usual courtesy rules about non-commercial use and giving credit where it's due).

I accept that the 3D printing machines are probably pretty familiar now, if not to me, but I hadn't realised that they come in various types. Graham has a Prusa machine, which prints using a plastic filament (FDM - Fused Deposition Modelling), and he also has one which is physically smaller (I have forgotten it's maker, but you can find all this on Graham's blog) - this second one produces the printed models in a resin bath rather than on a flatbed in the open air (which is what the FDM one does). Both produce astonishing results - the resin models show fine detail rather better (for figures), while the filament machine is better for buildings and similar pieces. I saw figures of various types, in all sorts of sizes, and am very impressed that the muskets and bayonets appear, faithfully and beautiful, right down to the smallest size. The afternoon was filled with tiny tanks, bren-gun careers, triremes, the hulls and sails of sailing ships, soldiers of every known size and all manner of bits and pieces for fortifications - even furniture for dolls' houses...

Prusa FDM 3D Printer - probably not the same model!

The cost of production of the pieces is very low, though the machines themselves are obviously a serious investment if you are looking for quality and reliability. Printing is slow, which is not a problem, though it requires some commonsense in scoping projects and realistic production times. I was interested to learn that with the resin machine you can group several soldiers (for example) and produce them as a single job, with the same elapsed time as a solitary figure - on the other hand, the FDM printer will do the figures as a single batch, but the times will be additive. I was about to add a note here about why this is so, but I suddenly remember that I am out of my depth.

I also saw a lot of beautiful and interesting painted soldiers, of course, which is inspirational and humbling at the same time, and we talked a lot about wargaming - no-one expected that! I had an excellent day all round. 

It's a part of the country I really don't know at all. I was favourably impressed - it was a fine, sunny day and, maybe apart from Hartlepool [!], the area is more attractive than I expected and, of course, the people are lovely. In the evening Graham took me along to the Redcar Raiders Wargaming Club, which meets in a pub (yeah!). The members were very friendly and welcoming - that's a thriving club. I wandered about, looking at the activities, trying not to do my usual Banquo's Ghost impersonation. Amongst other things, there were a number of Warhammer-style games, and Blood Bowl (which is new to me), and an interesting looking naval game called Blood and Plunder. All great fun. 

Redcar Raiders - photo borrowed from their Facebook page

Thanks again, Graham, for your time and generosity - a fascinating day, and very educational. I'm going to do some more reading online about 3D printers, to see what possibilities there are for adding the missing bits to my existing Vauban fort.

Topic Two

One result of what I have learned is that I now realise that 3D printing is the way to progress my fort and my siege gaming, whatever my timescale, and however ambitious the intentions of the project might become. One immediate casualty is that one of my interim "diversification projects" has now become defunct, which means I have a spare fort to dispose of.

I planned to put this on eBay in a few weeks. Here are some photos - if anyone is interested, please email me at the address in my profile, or else send a comment to this post (stating that it is not for publication) with your email details, so I can contact you. What I have on offer is anyscalemodels.com's Vauban fort set, with some extra pieces.  I regret that it would be a bad idea to mail it outside the UK, since the postage costs will be more than the price of the item - apologies for this, but UK only, please.

Some measurements - it is, as you see, a square fort. It's nominally 15mm scale, and it's cast in hard resin (the larger pieces are hollowed out, to keep the weight down). There are 4 walls, 4 bastions, 2 gatehouses and 4 staircases.

Overall size is 515mm square; the walls are 55mm to the top, and the straight wall sections are 180mm long, the roadway behind the rampart is 42mm wide. It is as new - I bought it about a year ago, and it has been stored, unpainted, in the original packaging - it just needs to be washed and painted. I'll try to get a painted view from Anyscale Models' website.

If you're interested, please get in touch. If there's no interest, I'll put it on eBay in a few weeks, but the price is likely to go up a bit to cover overheads.

Photo of painted Vauban Fort borrowed from Anyscale Models' website - I am offering a few additional bits

Spiritual Support

In my search for 15mm scenery which would suit the Danube campaign, I was disappointed to find that all known previous resin buildings are now OOP - JR Miniatures used to do the Essling Granary and the Aspern Church, as I recall, but no more.

After asking around after a suitable church, I found the best option was an HO model railway church made by Faller, which I obtained online from a supplier in Kiel. I reasoned that a 1/87 model of a small church might just about pass for a 1/100 model of a larger church. When I saw the kit the old heart sank (lots of fiddly bits, optional parts, minimal instructions, glue-in-place stained glass windows, and a general assumption that the user has done this before), but Goya very kindly built it for me, and here it is, with 20mm figures to give a sense of proportion.

There is a plan for a trip up north next week, to fight Day 1 of Aspern, so the church will travel with me. I never go anywhere without a church.

Thanks again, Goya - nice job.

Of Young & Fogg, and Aromatherapy, and Other Things

Topic 1: Young & Fogg.

Here are a couple of well-known - nay, historic - wargaming photos from the days when the whole world was still black and white. What common element is in both these pictures?

Yes - well done at the back, there - the buildings are from a fondly remembered range marketed by Triang, which was most famous because they were made of rubber.

Clive, the celebrated Old Metal Detector himself, has a collection of these splendid little buildings, and there are some fine pictures on his blog [click here].

So who were Young & Fogg? Well, they were a firm specialising in the manufacture of rubber items, who were taken over by the Triang company in the late 1950s. The first result of this acquisition was a range of rubber buildings to suit Triang's Spot On range of 1/42 scale diecast vehicles (the range is attractively described here, on a link provided, once again, by Clive); shortly afterwards, the more famous, HO model-railway-sized Countryside Range appeared, which lent itself more comfortably to gaming scales.

I remember these very clearly - my model railway days were over when they appeared, but I was very taken with them - especially the church. I never had any. The most pleasing thing about them was that they didn't look like other model buildings - model buildings mostly had very straight corners and bright colours, and didn't really resemble proper houses. The Triang rubber houses had cheerfully quirky designs - Cotswolds meet the Brothers Grimm - and had a nicely distressed, rounded appearance. The one feature which was a problem in the long term, of course, was the material of which they were made. Rubber grows old and perishes. The reason you see so few of these on eBay is because they have mostly rotted and been throw away.

I acquired one of the churches last year, or maybe it was the year before, as a makeweight in a job lot purchase from eBay. It wasn't an important element in the purchase, and I was expecting it to be a wreck. It pretty much was a wreck, too.

The rubber had dried out and cracked and twisted - never mind - I stuck it at the back of a shelf somewhere and vaguely thought I might have another look at it some time.

Now this week, I came across the Donald Featherstone picture at the top of this post, and I thought, righto - let's have another look at that rubber church.

Well, it's pretty awful. It should probably just go in the dustbin. However, since I am a madman I did some online research, and it seems that rubber can be softened by immersion in various brews, and the strategic ingredient in these concoctions is Oil of Wintergreen. Hmmm.

Thinks (this should be read in Bluebottle's voice, from the Goon Shows):

(1) I could purchase some Oil of Wintergreen and maybe a few other cheap constituents, and I could stew my church in this for a while.

(2) It would lose it's paint, but when it was softened I could pack it with bits of wood and whatever else was needed to train it back into a church shape.

(3) Leave it to cure and then refinish.

(4) Be the envy of my chums (if I had any).

I'm not fired up into any state of fevered excitement. The first snag is that Oil of Wintergreen is not available in bath-sized containers, as far as I can see. It is prized in the purple world of aromatherapy [ah yes, quite so], and thus it retails in poncey little 10ml bottles, with an eyedropper and an art nouveau label. The prices are not amusing, either.

Which brings us up to date. Has any devoted collector of these rubber buildings ever attempted a makeover of this type? Any views or war narratives which might help?

All advice will be most welcome. In my heart I fear my little rubber church is, to use a technical term, knackered.

Topic 2: Who's this then?

Here are two Napoleonic-period British light infantry officers. Like me, you may feel that you have seen this pair appearing as a comedy act at a seaside theatre. The one on the left is clearly from Les Higgins, and he is there simply to provide a scale comparison. What is the one on the right? He is obviously one of André Maurois' Filifers. This casting is of a very gangly officer - one of his feet is interestingly strengthened by placing it in a clump of grass. I have some ideas about his origins, but would welcome some better informed views.

Any ideas?

Topic 3: Luddites' Cup - Inverted snobbery in the world of Tech.

Here at Chateau Foy we attempt to strike a balance between our love of the venerable traditions of our stately home and of our uncomplicated, rural life and the heady excitement of the rush of modern technology advance.

Overall, we probably tend to be just a little reactionary - I am subjected to much scorn from my son, for example, simply because I cannot see any point in being able to take photographs with my razor, nor watch movies on the tumble dryer. Some element of versatility in my assembled gadgetry is welcome, but I find too many examples of solutions in search of a problem to solve.

Now the Contesse has a Kindle Fire, which she uses to - any guesses? - yes, that's right - she uses it to read e-books. Good. It would, of course, be possible to distract herself while she was reading e-books, by also using it to check continually if she has any email - this is always a good way to avoid coming face to face with the exact dimensions of one's attention span. But she does not normally do this; however, the other night she decided to make use of the Fire's internet capability, and check her social media accounts. She received the warning screen shown below, with which we are delighted. This must get us straight through into the group stages of the European Luddites' Cup, surely?

What a fine achievement. Our son may be too ashamed ever to speak to us again, which is not an unattractive idea.

Vauban Fort update - a hesitant toe in the water

Low-grade photo of my current half-fort from the old Terrain Warehouse range

I've mentioned a few times over recent years that I was keen to augment my collection of bits for my (15mm scale) Vauban fort. I have enough parts to make just over half a complete fort (on a hexagonal plan). I bought these - cast and finished (painted & flocked - including glacis sections) from Terrain Warehouse, maybe 9 years ago. Nice - as far as I can trace, no-one ever really produced anything to match it. Henry Hyde once described this range as "the Rolls Royce" of siege toys in this scale.

Two bits of bad news:

(1) The range was never complete - I had some correspondence with TW back then about providing drawings for some extra sections - garrison buldings, gates, a ravelin with a bridge etc.
(2) Terrain Warehouse stopped production - the range was sold on.

I have spent some years trying to keep tabs on who had the moulds, and what they intended to do with them. The current owners manufacture a wide range of products, and they are rationalising. I learn this morning that they have decided that the Vauban Fort is not one of the items which will be continued. The word is that they might be open to offers for the moulds and, since the manufacture uses an expanding foam product, the moulds come with a frame to hold the parts rigid during curing.

In context - with extra buildings (not in range) and 20mm figures - a useful piece of kit

A couple of thoughts here:

* The most sensible approach for me here might be simply to shrug, and resign myself to scratch-building any future fortress expansions
* On the other hand, it does seem a pity to let these things disappear.
* I have no experience of (nor facilities for) resin casting - I did, however, have a friend who had to pack in his business and retire because he damaged his health running exactly this type of cottage industry...
* There are many unknowns - I have no idea what sort of price the current owners would be looking for (not huge, I think), I have no idea at all of the current state of the moulds - or where they are. Basically I have no idea about anything.
* I said it was a toe in the water.

I'm looking for some input here. Anyone have experience of working with these materials, or a tame, air conditioned workshop just waiting to start up, or any thoughts at all, really?

This is not necessarily a vision of a crack-pot start-up or a business venture - though such a thing is not out of the question if there is interest and it makes sense. If someone with a current manufacturing capability would like to take these on, or talk about them, that would be useful. What I am NOT looking for is for someone to take the stuff on, and then shelve it as commercially unviable. We've already been through that - a few times, in fact.

At that point I would just go back to the scratch-building plan...

This is not a hustle. As a first priority, I have no wish to mess anyone about - not the current owners, nor anyone else - especially myself. If you wish to get in touch, without commitment, email me at the address in my Blogger Profile, or send a comment here, which I shall not publish if it is sensitive or confidential. I'm interested to see whether we can save these things from disappearing, but only if it makes any sort of sense.

Another Recycled Ornament - Felsham Village Church

This post is mostly based on an email I sent David yesterday, so I must apologise to him for taking the liberty of reusing it. David is my consultant on the subject of Suffolk churches and - by Jove - it seems I've gone and bought another to help out with my ECW scenery. Another ceramic ornament for Grannie's sideboard, this one is not from Tey Potteries, it was made by Mudlen End, a studio which was based in Felsham, Suffolk, and it is a rather fetching miniature of St Peter's church, in - erm - Felsham, in fact.

Now I've matted down the ferociously shiny glaze it looks perfect for the Church of St Mary Acton at Nantwich - I'll have to fight that one again.

If, like me, you don't know this church, you will know more if you watch this charming YouTube clip. The Wikipedia entry for the village tells us that the church dates back to the 14th Century, which is fine, then goes on to explain that the interior was insensitively restored in the 19th Century, which seems an odd thing to find in Wikipedia - faint sound of axes grinding? I think we need names and addresses...

Enjoy your little outing in Felsham. My sincere thanks to the publisher.

If a tree is in a box and no-one sees it, is it really there?

Well I haven't had any activity on the give-away quiz for a few days now, so - since I am in for a busy weekend - I decided to close a day early. Thanks to everyone who sent an estimate of the original value of the trees in the boxes. One slight shock was how unfamiliar and illogical the old British currency seems now.

There are 107 individual fir trees in the boxes - you probably can't quite see all of them, but I was looking for an estimate. I know it is 107 because I had 85 good trees and recently I obtained an additional 22, and also I can confirm that the number of magnetic patches I attached to them is 107. And, of course, I counted them again, to check. That should about do it.

107 trees, at 6-to-a-box, is 17-and-five-sixths boxes, which, at 3/11d a box (that's three-shillings-and-elevenpence, or 47 old pence a box), works out at close to £3:9:10d - that's three-pounds-nine-shillings-and-tenpence - or £3.49236. I did not bother to work it out in contemporary Mars Bars, since no-one seemed interested.

Best cost estimate came from Ross Mac, who doesn't want the prize and is therefore a Category B entrant (glory only). Ross's estimate of £3:3:7d was based on 16 and a half packs - 99 trees. If he had done the cost calculation more accurately, I think he'd have got £3:4:8d, which would have been even closer, but no matter - well done, Ross, the glory is yours.

The nearest estimate from Category A was Mark Dudley's £3:2:8d, so he wins the Lachouque booque (or Lachook book if you prefer). Mark - if you send me a comment (which I shall not publish) giving your postal address I'll get your prize to you.

Goya observed that, around 1960, when these were bought, three-pounds-something would not be far away from the average weekly wage of a manual worker supporting a family. Discuss...

Thanks again, everyone - them sums are harder than I remembered, man.

Can't See the Trees for the Wood - plus a small giveaway...

Well, you were warned. I now have my Merit Fir Tree collection safely housed in two wooden boxes. Yes, the trees have magnetic sheet on the bases and, yes, the boxes are lined with steel paper [was that a snort I heard from the back?]. My trees can now be transported in complete safety to most places you can think of. The boxes, by the way, are "Memory Boxes" - it is a very popular activity (I am told) to stow away photos, cuddly toys and all sorts of memorabilia to be kept safe for your descendants, or, I suppose, for yourself many years from now. Even someone else's descendants would do at a pinch - you get the idea - you leave something personal and precious - all you have to do is remember where you left the box, and who it was for.

Excellent. More relevantly, there are some good deals around at the moment on wooden memory boxes - worth checking out for odd storage problems.

Anyway, miserable beggar that I am, all I'm potentially leaving for posterity is my collection of plastic trees - I hope they are appreciated. As mentioned before, these Merit plastic accessories for model railways were manufactured by J & L Randall in the 1960s, and it says on one of my original Merit boxes that they were 3/11d a set - that's three-shillings-and-eleven-old-pence, or £0.19583 for half-a-dozen trees. This was in the days when a Mars Bar was 6d (£0.025) - just to put everything on an understandable footing.

Oh yes - the small giveaway. I have a spare copy of Henri Lachouque's "Napoleon's War in Spain" - in decent nick. If you are an existing follower of my blog (which includes regular email correspondents), then all you have to do is estimate from my photo what is the approximate original value of the fir trees in the two boxes (in Pounds Sterling, not Mars Bars) at 3/11d for a set of six trees - there is unlikely to be a round number of sets, of course. The book is a big format hardback, so if you live outside the UK I should be very pleased if you could help out with the postage charges.

Send a comment (which I shall not publish) with your estimate, or email me at the address in my Blogger profile - I'll award the book to the sender of the best estimate, and I'll keep this open until midnight at the end of 24th June.

****** Late Edit ******

Some perfectly reasonable protests from non-UK readers, not to mention UK readers who were never exposed to the pre-decimal money...

Just to confirm, there were 12 pence in a shilling, 20 shillings in a pound (abbreviations for pounds, shillings and pence were £, s and d) - so 240 old pennies in a pound.

Also to confirm, the number of trees shown here is not necessarily an exact number of boxes - for the purposes of the puzzle, ignore the fact that the assembled trees are different sizes and assume that each tree is one-sixth of a box...

A thought occurs to me - if you bought these from the high street hobby shop in 1960-something, the lady behind the counter would be able to work out how much so many lots of 3/11d added up to, without a calculator and without a barcode-reading till which did the sums and the stock control for her. This lady did not have a degree in arithmetic or anything, she just worked in a shop, and didn't get paid very much. Nowadays such things would be incomprehensible - even with decimal currency, most of us (including myself) rely on the automation.

The other thing that occurs, of course, is that the very idea of a hobby shop in your high street is pretty wild nowadays. 

I bought my first pack of Merit fir trees from the Post Office in Rose Lane, Allerton, Liverpool, circa 1959. My neighbour (and school chum) Hutchie and I combined our model railways (3-rail Hornby Dublo) into one slightly larger railway, but we fell out after about 3 weeks. Through some mystery which has never been explained, I lost an LMS guard's van in the redistribution. On the other hand, Hutchie seems to have lost 2 packs of Merit trees and 2 of Merit stone walls. I believe I still have them.

Dog eat dog.

Vauban Fort - maybe back on again?

This topic has been on and off like the girls' costumes in an old Windmill Theatre revue. Last update was about two years ago - here. 

As discussed before, I am the proud owner of approximately one half of a Vauban fort - it is nominally in 15mm scale (vertically), but the (horizontal) ground scale seems to be about right with my game scale of one-7-inch-hex-equals-200-paces, so you can work out what that might be if you can be bothered. Whatever it is, it looks very presentable and works nicely for my siege games (such as they are). The fort was made and painted by the old Terrain Warehouse operation (henceforth TW) - this fort, by the way, was once described by Henry Hyde as "the Rolls Royce" of fortress kit in this scale, so you have no need merely to accept my word that it is nicely done.

I have had some adventures over recent years, trying to get more parts for it. TW no longer exist, and the rights and moulds for the fortress were sold to another firm; I had a faltering dialogue with them two years ago, and the suggestion was that it might go back into production some time - not definite - but there was a good chance that they could make up some extra pieces for me.

Then, as so often happens, the line went dead. I have recently been thinking about doing some scratch building to augment the fort - the original production did not extend to gates, and there were a few other obvious bits missing, so scratch building had always been somewhere on the agenda.

Well, I am now back in contact with the current owners - it seems they about to set up a new company to concentrate on MDF and resin buildings, and the fort is a high priority.

We've been here before, of course, but that seems like potentially good news - I am asked to keep in touch - when something more definite develops I'll mention it here.

My original dealings with TW included me sending them some sketches of other pieces they could add to the range - so the garrison could get in and out. The aerial photo shows the original TW kit, the action picture (from 2009 or so) includes additional buildings to make up a fortified town.

Anyway - no news really, but the Windmill girls are once again in a "back on" situation.