World War II Project - Return to Normandy - Railroad Station

Long time readers may have vague recollections of the Sarissa Precision Railroad Station that I started work on. After I built the Mid-Terrace House from Sally 4th as far as I could (ran out of roofing materials) I decided to pull this building out and see what I could do with it.

While I do like Sarissa kits, in general, I still have a few issues with them. In some cases the laser cut are just to precise and tabs and slots need to be filed a bit in order to get a good fit without breaking anything. This is definitely the case with this kit. I have broken off several key components while trying to get things to fit together. Remember, MDF is fragile and to much pressure is more than likely to break something than to actually get it to fit together.

I added wood floor paper to the main floor, removed the old brickwork on the platform and basically fixed things up so I could move on to the next phase. The same phase that stopped me before, brickwork. I want the brick to stand out more from the building, otherwise the plastered surface and the brick are on the same level which is not what I want for this particular building. I need to cut some pieces to be able to wrap the brick sheet around and give it a little bit more depth. The only "bumpy" brick I have is on contact paper which makes it a little thicker and the contact paper is really not sticky enough for this type of work. After doing two terrace buildings with "bumpy" paper I want to keep that theme going I think it really improves the look. I'm actually considering redoing the outside of the Charlie Foxtrot dormer house with it I like it so much.

This is the state of the building when I finally managed to dig everything out.

I managed to get the floor piece in place. This is a large piece consisting of the platform, the floors and long cuts to slide it the building. Argh, thought I was going to break the darn thing and I did break one of the edge pieces off. Here you can see that I managed to get the wood floor paper in place. A real chore, but if I had glued down first then tried to slide it into place I would have torn it, the fit is that tight. Remember to keep your files and sandpaper handy to smooth down trouble spots!

Attic floors in place and papered up. They are removable (thank goodness). I added some extra ledges for them to rest on. There is some exterior trim with long tabs that should serve that purpose but I'm not using them in a couple places and in others I just didn't just the length of the tab sticking through the wall to be strong enough to support miniatures in the attics. If this was a rural American RR Station the spaces upstairs would be the living quarters for the station agent and his family. The only access should be through the small room on the right and there shouldn't be an attic floor at all in the baggage room on the left. The attics are really small too and because of the roof design the windows on either end are actually block off from seeing inside.

Got the fireplace/chimney assembly into place. That one was a very tight fit trying to slide it down the wall. Again keep the files handy. For the time being it is not glued into place (and probably doesn't need to be). This will be my first brick wrapping project for the station.

And a look from track side. A lot of work still to go on this one.

Review Villers-Bocage by Henri Marie

Villers-Bocage, Normandy 1944 by Henri Marie
Copyright 2010 (2nd Edition)(1st Edition 2003)
Heimdal

Although Henri refers to this as an a battle unknown to many, I'm sure that is certainly not the case with avid WWII gamers or especially those that play Battlefront's Flames of War, since they dedicated one of their Normandy books to it. Henri uses his original 1993 book as the springboard for this one. I don't have that book ("Tigers in Battle", 1993) but this new one builds from that original work.

Henri is a resident of Villers and has a pretty unique perspective on this particular battle and it is his goal to get as close to the historical truth as possible. I believe that he has pretty much succeeded in that endeavor. The covers the battle as a whole from the original clash in June through the eventual taking of the town from the retreating Germans in August, 1944. It is presented in both French and English usually side by side on the same page. Once you get used to skipping a column of text its pretty easy to read and the translation is excellent.

He does a good job of stripping through the propaganda and getting to the historical facts surrounding the battle in general and Michael Wittman's attack on "A" Squadron 4 CLY of the 22nd Armored Brigade and "A" company of the First Rifle Brigade on June 13th, 1944. Overall he treats this as an element of the battle but most of his focus is really getting to the heart of this particular attack and its affect on future events. I do feel that there is definite desire to discredit Wittman something that definitely comes up in the conclusions at the end of the book. He also contradicts himself in a couple of places. In the end decisions have to be made on the spot by the men on the ground, with 20/20 hindsight its easy to discredit some of those decisions now.

At the end he puts forth a number of conclusive statements, some I agree with some I disagree with and a couple I think are flat out wrong. As the reader that is my prerogative after all. The book has a fair number of eye witness accounts. In fact this book is the result of visiting British soldiers on the 50th anniversary of D-Day. It is filled with pictures from the battle itself (many of which I have seen before) as well as pictures form both before the battle and what some of those sites look like today. There are a whole series of excellent maps that show all kinds of interesting details.

This is really an excellent book and I highly recommend it.