Customised Sarissa Precision Bridge

 Our Wagram game called for a number of  buildings and bridges (9 in total) and we were able dip into various peoples collections to get the required number, including a few scratch built specifically for the game. While building the terrain boards I realised that I had very few man made structures of my own for 15mm gaming so I ordered some MDF kits from a couple of different manufacturers; including 4 bridges from Sarissa Precision . One of them I spent a little more time on:

I love assembling MDF kits but the nature of the material and the way MDF kits have to be made means details and textures are hard to achieve. Fortunately for me, I love embellishing the kits as much as I like assembling them. One of the first things I noticed with these bridges were they are a bit large for 15mm. For big battle games like Wagram I like my structures to be a bit on the small side; the bridge would be perfect for skirmish gaming but a little long and wide for my liking. The first thing I did was cut down the bridge deck to 55 mm width. It would have been quite a bit more work to cut down the length so I left that as is since it was less important:

 

This meant that the bases the bridges come on also had to be trimmed:

My initial thought was to put texture on the sides of the bridge to represent plastering but I could not find any support for that having been done to medieval/renaissance bridges so I decide to use some Plastruct textured styrene (O scale Random Cut Stone 91560) to sheet the sides:

O scale is over-sized for 15mm but it doesn't look ridiculous here (the card arch comes with the kit):

Next up, were the coping stones that run along the top of the bridge sides. I used two methods: green stuff and 2mm foamed PVC (Foamex):

Although the greenstuff was probably a bit faster, as it took a bit more time to texture and scribe the PVC, I like the foamed PVC better. On top of that, there were lots of bits of the yellow epoxy that were already set and didn't mix well with the blue epoxy. I pressed a small rock into the PVC to get a nice, natural texture.

Another change I wanted to make to the bridge was the deck; I wanted a stone bridge deck, not a wooden one which the card best represents. For this I turned to 1mm foamed PVC and scribed stones into it and textured it in the same fashion as the coping stones.

This took quite a bit of time, although I did find it oddly satisfying and I have only done it for one bridge.

With that done it was ready for paint:

The bridge deck is a bit darker In Real Life. The scribed Foamex is fairly deep so I was able to use un-sanded grout in the joints after painting and sealing the bridge to represent mortar 

 As there are 4 bridges in total I am going to use some Tamiya stone sheet I have had for a decade for the other three to save time; it will go on after priming. I may come back and redo those bridge decks in the future as I am currently looking to buy some flexible epoxy resin for roads and it would work for these arched bridge decks as well.