This project is throwing up a few things that even a much experienced (which I am not!), railway modeller might find new and unusual. OK a military modeller might not but be put out by such things as sand bags, shells and barbed wire but even then I need them in far greater quantities than a 12 inch square diorama would need. I have found a few articles on making sandbags on the net but they tend to recommend using Miliput. Now Miliput is something I have a bit of a hate - hate relationship with - I do use it because I haven't found anything else but really don't like it! Anyway, with the quantities of sandbags I need it would be prohibitively expensive. So, I have been having a go with DAS.

And here are the results. They are sat on the cardboard moulds I made which I rolled a rough sausage covered in clingfilm into to make a sort of rectangular strip. I then cut them to length with the back of an old blade to squidge it a bit then pinched up the end to represent the tie. One unexpected result of the two layers of card I used was to produce a seam along the middle which, although it looks like a moulding mark which should be removed is in the exact place that the seam would be on a real bag. I do like the squidginess of the bags which means you can make them flop into position in a very realistic fashion. After the wall had dried and all the bags fell apart I did realise that a spot of PVA is needed while building them up.

This is still a pretty slow way of doing things though so am going to try to make some cookie cutter type things out of brass to get the lengths the same or even to cut out in one piece from a large rolled sheet. I am also wondering about the possibilities of my daughters PlayDo Ice cream machine!

I have now painted them and are looking rather good but not got around to a picture yet. Am still not completely happy with the dimensions though so not going to get too carried away just yet. We are off to Holland and Belgium in a few weeks and I have managed to negotiate a couple of days around Yypres so should be able to get a few pointers there.