Thursday 13th October - Pebble Island

Took the day off work today so that Matt and I could start work on Pebble Island.

From Tony's design

We started by laying a base of sand one end and rubble the other.

Once the rubble was down we then started to add some soil dug from elsewhere on the site.

Just one last lot to add but time ran out and we were knackered anyway.

Hopefully we can carry on sometime over the coming weekend.

Saturday 8th October

Today Tony and I constructed the bases for the two smaller Dioramas. We used Scaffold boarding cut to size and screwed together. Next job is to fill them both with rubble and topsoil.

We did have some help(?) from these characters.

They seem to be forever drinking tea though..

Sunday 2nd October

Well today we should have started on the other two dioramas we are planning. However due to several factors this was not possible, so we decided to play...err lay out some figures on the main one to see how it would look.

Thanks to Chris (AKA Von Ryan/Barney Leadhead) and Tony (AKA ZULU-1/Firetiger) for a great day playing....err working out the layout of the diorama.

Day 1 of Construction

Sunday 18th September we started construction.

First the area was marked out

The boxes are made out of decking planks and are to make the gun emplacements and command centre for the Argentinians on the hill. It will become apparent how they will be used later.

Then digging out the top layer started. Here's ZULU-1 and Master Cappy doing the manual work (I was there purely to record the progress and supply copious cups of tea).

The turf was put to one side for use later.

The last bit of turf was just folded back so it can be refolded once the infill had been added.

Then a river and pool were dug. this will be lined with pond liner material before filling with water.

Infill was reclaimed from some of the other derelict buildings onsite, and used to build up the 'Hill'.

There was plenty of this but it soon got used up.

The boxes for the Mortar/MG/Command Post emplacements were put in place.

Extra rubble was then added around the boxes.

Soil was then added along with some cut down drainpipe to form foxholes.

Soil was damped down with water before more being added followed by the turf we kept from earlier.

The boxes now look as though they were dug into the hill. These will be lined and made to look like dugout entrenchments, they will house Mortars and MG's.

So this is as far as we have got today. The boards keeping everything in place are temporary as one of my fellow Museum members will be preparing proper finished boards to replace them.

Next scheduled date for continuing construction is Sunday 2nd October.