Newhaven 1 - building a town

Though still a long way to go before it will be anywhere near finished.

I bought a load of A4 sized 2mm mdf boards to act as a base which meant 'losing' the board I was using for land previously. Eventually I'll get the boards painted/flocked to match the buildings etc, for now everything is in flux any so no point.

Original idea was to have a harbour and sea-scape; obviously could still have that as it's not a permanent set up, but quite simply my table is too small for what I want anyway - in fact, the end of the table currently used for clutter/storage will soon be pressed into service itself. Instead I'm going for a canal/river set up with a dock rather than jetties. By placing all the boards on top of a blue cloth, the cloth acts as the canal/river.

The first photo shows a view pointing to the South-West. The church  doesn't actually fall into the sea, it's just the terrain boards run out there... The far side of the river will be the port and commercial area. The buildings currently on the far side are liable to be replaced in the future by mdf - and shouldn't be there anyway.

This photo from the West Bank shows the canal and my current buildings. Some of the buildings themseves are liable to cross the river as they are mostly commercial buildings in a residential area.

A view looking North down the river. The grey road will, at some early stage, have a railway line and crane on or next to it. I also plan to include a bridge. Actually, suspension of belief will really come into play for the river. How do ships turn? How can they get under the bridge when it is bought?

But then, the roads aren't wide enough for cars to pass each other either. 28mm takes up too much space.

This is the church and graveyard - possibly in their final places?  In future, I can see the church and graveyard appearing in lots of different settings.

A view of the back of my current buildings. The 'Park' area is just a way of filling empty space though a Park is planned.

Finally, after taking the above photos my latest order arrived... a crane and railway lines for the dock, a bandstand for the Park. I believe that I also have a small parcel of goodies for Father's Day lying around, so...

The hope is for everything to be more or less finished by August to allow me to run a few solo games. It's getting there, but proving both more time consuming and more expensive than I had either planned or budgetted for. Still... in well over 40 years of wargaming it's really my first serious attempt to worry about terrain other than how to set out a few basic hills and woods...