I have been looking at the Waterloo farmhouse through the magic of Google Earth and using the ruler tool have come up with some dimensions for it.

Basically, the buildings around the main courtyard are 50m deep by 58m wide on the outside perimeter. The main farmyard square is 35 x 40m and the area to the south, where in 1815 there was a pond, is 13.8m by 12.8m.

Does anyone have the Airfix model handy to measure these features on the model? If the kit were true 1/76 then it would need to be about 66cm deep by x 76cm wide. I've a feeling it's about half that and thus more like 1/150 scale than 1/76 - but I've not had one in my hands for years to check.

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Can't give you measurements at present, but can confirm your general impression. The windows and doors are approximately 1/87 scale. I doubt the model is one quarter of what it would need to be to properly represent the actual in 1/76.

FWIW I have established that the Airfix model of La Haye Sainte is roughly 21cm deep by 40cm wide by 7.5cm tall.

It's not clear where the original east wall ends in Google Earth but the  depth of the farm has not changed and is as noted 50m.

It appears therefore that the Airfix La Haye Sainte model is roughly 1/250 horizontal scale.

It's harder to establish the height of the buildings but based on an assumed door height of 7 feet I reckon the main farmhouse building to the north is around 36 feet high. This makes the model's vertical scale 1/146.

I was thinking of buying one and accurising it but I don't think I'll bother....! One would need to replace everything, I think.

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Why don't you have a go at scratching a wall or two out of architect's board and see how you go. FWIW, I bet the doors aren't 7' high. I would guess 6'.

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for what it is worth I would agree with Brews and suggest that you scratch a section as a test, you may well find it easier (and cheaper) to build the whole farmhouse from scratch.  be careful with things like door and roof heights- old buildings had higher ceiling than modern builds as they were heated by open fires and needed the ceiling height for smoke, also remember that people are taller now and the farmhouse was old then if there are any very old houses or cottages near you go and check this out as you will find that 17th/18th buildings can have doorways only five feet in height.

David.

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I don't think that the Waterloo Farmhouse was ever intended to be an accurate, scale representation of La Haye Sainte. More likely, the doors, windows and suchlike are depicted in 1/76 or 1/87 scale - as was their wont with railway buildings, the Airfield Control Tower and the like - whilst the remainder is a rough, box scale, representation of the layout of the farm
 :geek:

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Ratch,
I Seem to remember that the original Airfix Magazine ran a series on detailing that set and used TWO farmhouse sets to build the farmhouse as it should be. I agree that the Airfix model is a toylike representation made purely for the wargames of our youth but don't forget that we may not all now be looking at it in that light.  We today have the habit of treating all these old mouldings as we would a new tool kit and in doing so take the whole thing far too seriously- and then all to often (but not in this case) before you know it the toys get thrown around the pram park.

David.

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I totally agree David. Modern expectations of kits far outstrip those of 30+ years ago  :roll:

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If it helps, in my index I have recorded....

An initial article in Airfix Mag Oct 72 with a "corrections" Jan 73, and a readers photo Sep 72

Also Military Modelling did an article back in the days when it was a joint  Wargaming issue, if I recall correctly a colour photo and that the gateway is flush with the wall.

If it is of interest Both Mags did similar articles
for Hadrian's Wall Mile fort.

Unfortunately I have not noted it all and would need a lot of searching to find things in the loft ...........where modification to insulation work are ongoing

Mike

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Hi all

Believe it or not I originally started paying attention to LHS as a potential 54mm project. Every unit depicted by a figure in the 54mm Waterloo range was engaged around the place at some point during the day, so I wondered if a diorama was feasible.

I remembered the Airfix in "1/76" was quite small, so I thought OK, if that's accurate then in 1/32 it would be quite compact. How I laughed when I got onto Google Earth to check, and worked out that, correctly scaled, just the courtyard would be five feet on each side in 54mm!

This made me suspect that the kit version might be undersize...!

Airfix IMHO approached it quite sensibly. If they had scaled it correctly in 1/76, it would be 66cm square excluding the orchard to the south and the kitchen garden to the north (bounded  by the wall extension on the model). IOW it would dominate any wargame table it was placed on.  

Instead it's basically a compromise between a manageably-sized wargame table feature versus a correctly-scaled accurate model.  In fact most of the error in the Airfix kit is in the courtyard, which is too small. The buildings actually look not bad. If the main door is only 6 feet high then its vertical scale is 1/120. I wonder if it was scaled to be 1/144 in height with HO/OO doorways and a box scale courtyard??

Size aside, I can see two major errors with it and one small one.

1: Assembled with the gatehouse to the east, said gatehouse sticks out beyond the wall, but should be recessed flush;

2: The barn to the south is shown extending as far west as the outside wall of the stable on the west side. In 1815 it actually stopped at the inner wall. It has been extended since 1815 and it looks like the Airfix model nowadays, but it didn't then.

3: The minor error is chimneys - there should be one at each end of the farmhouse and one a third of the way along from the left.

There are some other minor issues. It is missing the two rows of dormer windows, but you can't really model those given the shrunken size of the house. There was also a pond in the south-eastern corner of the farmyard which would be a puddle as scaled, but the same rationale applies. The farm complex is usually depicted with all roofs in terracotta, but in fact, only the north and south flank rooves were that colour. The west and northwest buildings' roofing was slate blue. There is some doubt as to whether the brickwork was rendered white (so didn't look like bricks), painted white, or whether the render had largely fallen off showing extensive red brick underneath. All are shown in contemporary sources.

The real challenge with modelling LHS - in any scale - is that the ground sloped up to the north, so the east wall gets higher stepwise as it runs north.

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That sounds very interesting- I often think of this as a project even though it is rather outside my normal modelling interests and I don't wargame but do rather like history.  660mm square is doable and the orchard and kitchen garden could be separate blocks for wargaming, the sloping ground could be done if the main block included small sections of sloping terrain to three sides and the other sections were built to match the main block and if used for gaming were of vestigial size for when they were used together on a table.  Although if you wished you could build two sets of blocks for the orchard and garden, a full-size set for display and a gaming set for the table.  Just a thought.

David.

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I once posted a link to the Airfix Magazine Annual 3 article that showed how to make Hougomont using two Airfix Waterloo Farmhouse sets. Although not directly linked to the original post, it does offer some interest to anybody wishing to make either Hougomont or La Haye Sainte. You can download a PDF version of the article here.

Dave

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It screams out to be done correctly for use in 20mm skirmish games. Most wargame rules are based around battalion-sized units on a 1:20 or 1:50 figure ratio. But there are a few skirmish sets around now based on company level actions with a man:figure scale of 1:1.

LHS done to the same scale would fit nicely on a 6 foot by 9 foot table.

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FWIW here is a screengrab of Google Earth view of LHS from above.



The yellow line is the ruler tool which suggest that it's just under 50m across the complex from west to east.

I don't have the Airfix LHS in front of me but my guess is that the buildings are too short but are about the right width. If you linked them end to end and spaced them correctly you could probably get an accurate-ish depiction together.

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