1:35 Factory Gate

The gate as a frame for the scene

An entrance to a works has two jobs in a diorama. It frames the view and at the same time explains why the vehicle is standing exactly where it stands: waiting to be let in, or pushing its way out of the yard. The subject is an industrial entrance of interwar cut, that is brick pillars, steel gate leaves and the adjoining part of the fence or wall. A scene can be built around such an element with a single vehicle and two figures.

Its place within the range

In the number system of the brand's diorama goods this is a piece from the group of large building sections. That group holds twenty items and the gate is the largest of them by volume. The whole diorama line is called Scenics and is issued by Acrylicos Vallejo of Barcelona; under the same heading building sections, small street furniture, tree stumps and grass tufts sit side by side, so a scene can be put together from a single source.

Painting and setting out

It is good to tell the brickwork of the pillars and the metal of the leaves apart already at the priming stage, because each surface ages differently. Brick takes a dark deposit in the joints and a dry brush, whereas steel will stand rust pigments drawn from top to bottom along the way water runs. Rust clings most to the hinges, so it pays to bring them out. The bottom of the pillars is dirtied by mud from the wheels, which at the same time helps to anchor the element optically where it seats on the base. Anyone who wants to go further adds a faded advertising sign or a building number to the wall, because it is exactly such a detail that gives the scene a particular place and time.