Thanks so much guys.
It’s certainly going to be a while before I plan any more jungle dios - too much greenery. Italy was a doddle by comparison. In fact, my next stop is probably going to be the Ardennes Offensive - so at least it will be Europe in the winter!
As a little aside, here is how I went about the telegraph pole. This is an important part of the scene, because it features prominently in the photographs of Parsons’ 2 pounder.
The poles along the Bakri road were quite distinctive. As well as being very tall, they had a thicker base with a high band of white paint to mark the sides of the road (where there appears to have been a slight ditch). They also had an uneven number of insulators - six on the road side, four on other.
The best view comes from the shots of the burning Ha-Gos further up the road:
I am assuming that the wires were brought down when the trees were cut down just after the battle, although it’s impossible to be sure. I suppose it might just as easily have been part of a desperate ‘scorched earth’ policy by the retreating Commonwealth troops who would have wanted to ensure that the advancing Japanese had no means of intercepting the telephone network behind the rapidly diminishing lines.
Anyway, the basis for my telegraph pole was the venerable
Miniart set, although I used a wooden dowel for the pole and made the thicker base from a sleeve of plastic tube. I then added the cross pieces and insulators from the
Miniart set and added some brackets from plastic strip, plus some suitable bolt heads.
The ladder, which also features prominently in the most famous photo, was scratch built from lengths of square U-shaped plastic rod with added brass.
The pole assembly was then painted with Vallejo acrylics…
So far so good. But then I had to work out how to make the sagging wires and attach them to the insulators. After a bit of online research I came across two options: fishing line (0.14mm) and fine gauge wire (0.15mm / 34 gauge).
These are not only very cheap, but also come in very long reels - so enough for the rest of my life time I suspect!
The image two steps above shows the first attempt with fishing line. As you can see, it sags quite nicely, but it’s the wrong colour. It’s also not prone to sharp bends, so it had a tendency to stick out either side of the insulators before it sagged.
Then I tried the wire, which has a realistic gun metal finish and will take sharp bends - but I found it too stiff to achieve a realistic sag.
So in the end I compromised by using the fishing line, which I sprayed with a gun metal colour, for the actual telephone lines and the wire to tie the fishing line to the insulators. This was tricky, because I had to create a loop of the wire to ‘lasso’ the fishing line in place (temporarily fixed with fast drying super glue). I then used slow-drying black super glue to flood the metal wire and, when it was dry, I snipped the excess away.
This did, however, have he desired effect - and was also more realistic, since the real wires are often tied to the ceramic pots in a very similar way.
The fact that the wires are now painted in a dark metal colour means that they are almost invisible to the naked eye unless they catch the light or stand out in silhouette - just like the real thing… Job done!