Progress on Harpers Ferry

The last couple of days I've gone back to building work on the Harpers Ferry armoury. 

Researching the buildings isn't easy. All but the engine house (aka John Brown's Fort) were burned to the ground during the Civil War and the entire landform of the armoury grounds was later altered to make way for a revised alignment of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. I'm having to rely on a few contemporary photographs and drawings that inevitably concentrate on the storming of the engine house.

I previously finished the water tower that stood just inside the main gate of the armoury

and then went on to build the next building on the right-hand side of the area I'm modelling, which I believe to be a warehouse:

Now I'm on the penultimate building. This is variously described as the "guard house" and the "paymaster's office". I'm assuming that it has both functions. 

In the photograph below (taken during the Civil War) it's the building to the right of the arch-windowed engine house. Other pictures give us some idea of the taller section that's off-camera to the right of this photograph.

I've been building the structure in two phases. The lower section on the left was built first followed by the taller and deeper end with, as far as I can determine, the only door.

I'm doing all of the buildings with basic interior detail as it's likely fighting will take place within at least some of them. I'm planning on detailing the spaces (from left to right in the picture above) as follows:

The space with the bricked up windows as a sleeping area and inner office for the Paymaster (complete with 3D printed safe). The central area as an outer office for the Paymaster and his clerk, where the workers come to collect their wages. And the larger space as the guardroom (though there was only a single nightwatchman at the time).

Access to the interiors requires removable roofs. These are made initially from thin cardboard attached to supports made from offcuts of foamcore. In the photo below that were put in place while the PVA dried.

I've spent most of today tiling the taller half with Warbases laser-cut tiles.

It's a pig of a job but I know it'll be worth it in the end. 

Next steps are to make the currently black chimney somewhat taller - it doesn't quite work as it is - and then roof that part of the building. I don't have enough of the Warbases tiles left so I'm going to use the same material I used on the warehouse to create a corrugated iron roof for this too.

When this building is finished, I'll make a start on the engine house while contemplating how to build the front gates and, big challenge, the B&O railroad trestle along the river side of the board.