Trostle Farm in 1/30th scale

This commission was one I hoped would materialise for a couple of years. When I last visited the Gettysburg battlefield site I had stopped at the farm and had thought it would be a wonderful building to make. I just hoped I had the opportunity.
The December Toy Soldier show saw me talking to Bob Jones (aka UKreb) and plans were hatched to deliver the farm house at the March show just gone. I was so pleased and couldn't wait to start.
The full how to article will be published in a future edition of the Toy Soldier Collector so I won't go into loads of detail here.
The job started with just the farmhouse

the house just after the battle.

I tried to recreate the house photographed just a few days after the battle in 1863. The house today is bigger with an extension on the far side of the house- as you can see in this photo

Once I had decided the size of it all I had to do was re create it as closely as possible. I used resin windows that I already had and it gave me an opportunity to use some G gauge guttering that I had bought ages ago. It worked very well.

I built the frame of the house from my usual foam board and then used balsa for the wooden cladding. I then decided on white walls and green wooden shutters. That is slightly different to the colour scheme today but looking at the original photo it does suggest the scheme I decided.
Here are a few photos showing work in progress:

As it got closer to being finished Bob and I began discussing how it would be displayed at show. This chat resulted in me making the barn and a wagon shed. The barn still has a cannon ball in it so I decided to make that part of it. It wasn't feasible to make the whole thing as these barns are enormous things. The model is only about 8" deep with a flat back, designed to go at the back of any display.
Here they are finished: To give you an idea of the size- the farmhouse is over 18" long.

Then finally them all together on my stand at the show in March:

I will post more photos once Bob has used his magic with a camera and added figures and a good backdrop.