75th Anniversary of Battle of Monte Cassino and Northern Italy (Terrain Build)
Trenches - Retaining Walls
Now that the polyfilla is dry, I want to build a more realistic ‘inside’ of the trench. I’m assuming that the earth needs some sort of retaining wall and that the easiest solution would be wooden planks.
To start with, I’ve sanded the vertical face of the trench as flat as possible. I only applied a thin polyfilla layer here just to cover any cracks/holes and to provide a solid surface for the glue to adhere to.
Example of the sanded, flat surface Matchsticks seem the obvious option for creating a simple, cheap but effective wooden retaining wall. I’ve started by cutting the uprights. These are the height of the trench and I’ve placed one upright roughly every inch along. I’ve glued these down with super glue to ensure a good fix.
As the uprights aren’t religiously 1″ apart, I need to cut the cross beams to size for each section. I found doing this first the best option. I’ve then filled the gaps where the cross beams will go with plenty of PVA.
All the wood glued in placeIt took a while to complete all of the trench sections but I think it will look worthwhile once all painted up. I think I will take it a step further and add some sandbags along the top. This will add to the overall look as well as hide the join between the matchsticks and the rest of the trench banking.
Some of the completed trench sections (I'll clip the longer uprights off later)
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