Hello, I am after some advise, building a dockyard diorama and the sheer scale of this model, so far I have several small tugs, destroyers, subs and a seaplane tender the IJN Mizuho, buildings, craines, and vehicles all will be out of the box and 1-700 scale, due to a serious lack of space, I have also considered making a segmental diorama such as my WW1 land dio and was wondering if anyone could advise me on build and probabal size of this layout, look forward to your reply.

HI Alec!

Concerning size, you can control that by determining how much of the yard you really want to reveal. For me, the real issues would be which ships to depict and which actual yard to portray.

For example, Sasebo had a wonderful semi-circular inlet that had graving docks splayed out like extended fingers. Yokosuka has remarkable cliffs and steep hillocks studding the scenery. Kure is a dense concentration of piers.

It comes down to doing the research.

--Karl

Hello there Karl thank you for the response, believe it or not, my type of research is rubbish, I look up WW2 Japinese dockyards and get prison ships, or tons of subs, the 3 names you gave me work out well, however after looking at them, and realising the size I'll have to work with, I might be cheeky and go for a fantasy dockyard, I very quickly realised certain ships would never been seen with each other at certain dockyards, and even the same said for building which would be different from dock to dock, I now have a better idea of what I am after, but what did you think of the idea of segments ?

If by segmented you mean module....several sections or dioramas that can stand alone or come together as one. Those end up looking pretty great if done right. I saw a goup of 11 guys do it. When it came together wow. They won Nationals that year and in th end, everyong took their piece home

The hardest thing that comes home is the fact that just about everyone else is better then me, at building, painting, rigging, and the dreaded photoetch, laying out the sea effect and even painting the crew, but I try, and I enjoy this hobby I only wish I could find something that will stick PE to plastic instantly, you name it, I have tried it and failed every time, I live in a very small house, you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a wall, I've tried (just kidding) and as I am building a WW1 land diorama, the thought struck me that, maybe this sort of thing could be carried out for a dockyard diorama, a few hills and stretched out dock, a few combative ships laying in a carm sea, and maybe a few aircraft flying above, although I have been given some good advise on harbours and dockyards, I really don't know where to start, so once again, any help would be great.