Meanwhile, back at Harpers Ferry...

As well as working on 6mm terrain and playing Chain of Command at Ebor Lard, I've been trying to keep  making progress towards having the Harpers Ferry terrain ready in plenty of time so I can playtest my Steel Lard game.

I've built the main structure of the board out of insulating foam. Thanks Fay Hield for the use of your offcuts!

One edge represents the stone wall that separates the armoury from the Potomac River. Here we see it from the Potomac side:

Between the two blue foam walls is the "boat ramp" a slope down to river level used to allow boats to load or unload directly into or from the armoury grounds. A couple of years later a Union Army pontoon bridge was anchored at the foot of the ramp. Abraham Lincoln would walk across the bridge and up the ramp to visit "John Brown's Fort".  

Atop the wall is the raised Baltimore and Ohio railroad line. In reality it was double track but space and considerations of What a Cowboy ground-scale preclude reproducing that.

The track bed is made from 7mm PVC foam board courtesy of Richard Phillips's local coffee shop. I added wood grain using a wire brush and then scribed in planking.

The cast-iron pillars are 3D printed.  A pile of storage boxes carved from insulating foam helps to support the inevitable join between pieces of board.

The space under the railroad was used for storage so I'll be adding some more boxes, barrels, spare columns etc. Obviously I've had to paint much of this part of the project at this stage because it'll be harder to get at it later.

I've added track from Sarissa Precision.

I've glued the 3D-printed fence sections in place too...

I've printed out a pair of cast iron gates to go between the two sets of stone pillars. I think they'll be too delicate to transport safely if I glue them in place so I'm going to create a base that fits in the space to carry them. It'll also carry the bollards that were positioned to prevent wagons bashing into the stone piers when trying to pass through the gate.

The next stage is to build the last and most important building; the engine house or John Brown's Fort itself. I started putting craft knife to foamcore this afternoon:

More pics when I've got further into the job.