¹⁄35

WWII U.S.Navy Dock

project description...

This diorama started out as a dock scene for just the Trumpeter Liberty ship being loaded and soon progressed into the finished layout you now see. It is fictional as I can only place the USS Alaska and Pittsburg on the same US coast at the same time. I'm not sure if they were ever docked together. As for the HMAS Arunta, she never visited a mainland US port during WW2, but with the cluster of stars and stripes everywhere, I just had to add the Aussie workhorse.

Time to build was about 6 months of pretty well uninterupted construction. Apart from the ships,submarine and railway gear, everything else was scratchbuilt from wood, a ton of Evergreen plastic and spare photo-etch. Lighting was added as an afterthought, just a day before all the buildings were fixed in place. Lights are the 'grain of rice',12volt/yellow lead type and all is wired in a simple series, whereas if one blows, the rest will keep working.

The scene is populated with about 400+ Eduard prepainted 1:350 photo-etch figures. The dock workers were re-painted into civvy colours. The seaward ends of the docks are not really finished as they are too clean. I still want to add more 'junk'to give it a realistic busy look, but my attention span was getting thin and was already planning and preparing my next project.
White Ensign Models Colourcoats were used for all painting and the Gold Medal Models photo-etch set was used on the Trumpeter Liberty ship. Both are excellent products.

I would also like to thank Ted Paris from Commanders/Iron Shipwrights who supplied extra trains, rolling stock and photo-etch boarding ladders at no extra cost... and for releasing the very excellent resin kits in the first place.