Building a Bridge to Kabul

Been very busy with work and family since New Year's, but managed to complete one hobby project over the past 10 days or so.

My last blog post featured my "scratch" terrain layout for my What If? "Bala Hissar or Bust!" scenario.

One of several shortcomings of the set-up was that one of the two large bridges over the Kabul River was painted to serve in Europe or North America, not Afghanistan.  Since bridges are rather prominent structures on a battlefield, this bothered me.

I didn't want to repaint it, so I set myself the task of building a replacement bridge from scratch.

The material I had on hand for this task was some "short-end" pieces of high-quality blue insulation foam, left over from building my river terrain boards last year.  When the bridge's structure was complete, I strengthened the underside of its two arches and the base of the center column with Elmer's Wood Filler.

Then I used commercial Model RR "Flexible Wall" pieces from Chooch Enterprises, and some small pieces cut from a Plastruct sheet of bricks, to add stone texture to the bridge, all of which I hot-glued to the foam.

When that was done I covered the remaining visible foam surfaces with Durham's Water Putty, which has the advantage of drying very fast, and allowed me to keep working without having to wait for a long drying process first.

When that was all done I base-coated the bridge in dark brown and went to work dry-brushing it with multiple layers of several shades of mudstone and sandstone.

I'm pretty happy with how the bridge turned out.  It's no masterpiece but I think it manages to fit on the same table as the similar size but far more masterfully designed and constructed bridge which Chris Riordan (aka: Chris The Model Maker) built for me, without looking too out of place, at least to me.

Next I need to replace a Medieval European gateway with another scratch-built section of wall including an arched entrance to the city of Kabul.  On the bright side, I think that will be a bit easier than building this bridge was.

Here's a bunch of WIP pics, and a few pics of the bridge set down in its spot in the layout...