Victorian delights

OSHIROblog
2 hours ago
4 min read

I've had a fairly extensive Victorian range for a good while now and this post is to show some of them but also what is possible by mixing and matching coupled with scratch building and what sort of scenes can be made.

Victorian ranges

Similar to the Highgate Miniatures line, the idea behind the ranges was to have a period accurate range of buildings and accessories that were suitable for gaming but don't retract from their historical appearance. London in the later Victorian period was crowded, smelly and dirty (smelly not being really feasible in gaming...) which can be difficult to recreate on the tabletop but I've tried to do my best. I've also used many of the buildings for our VSF on Mars games; a couple of which can be seen in the gallery at the bottom of the page.

There are five categories for the Victorian ranges (excluding Highgate Miniatures) and with them, there is enough to be able to recreate the cramped feel of Victorian London. They are all laser cut from 2mm acrylic and pre-glued in layers to allow for window/door returns and are primed before being shipped. Windows are cut from 1mm acrylic and doors are a mix of either 1mm or two layers of 0.5mm to allow for as much detail as possible. I will be doing some tutorials showcasing the simpler builds in the near future and these tutorials will have all the tips and tricks for assembling them.

All the buildings have accessible interiors with removable roofs and upper floors. The Victorian terraces section is the base of the whole range and from here you can pick diverse options to create many of the different types of buildings found in London during the period, from a simple terrace to a towering warehouse or a row of shops. Back yards, pavements and outbuildings are also included to help give you own cities a lived in feel.

The facade range is small at the moment but I am drawing new designs to include in it but, as with most things, time can be an issue. Also, another problem that can occur is a lengthy testing period; making sure that all the pieces fit and nothing is left out for example. The buildings in this range all have rear access as they are meant to be placed on table edges and not take up too much room on the tabletop, which can be useful if space is at a premium. All the kits come with card tile sheets in usually random colours and adding these to the roofs can really help bring out the range to it's full potential.

The railways section is relatively new but the range didn't feel thorough enough without them. At the moment, it's a fairly small range of useful outbuildings and a few additions that can be used with existing stock from other manufacturers but I am working on some resin rail sets hopefully due out before Christmas that will certainly compliment the detail given in the buildings. Like all the Victorian buildings, the brickwork is as accurate to the period as possible, with the style being Flemish bond; although other styles were used but weren't as common. The bricks themselves are as close to the actual scale size of 1:50 as I could get them without losing the detail when looking at a distance.

Warehouses were a mainstay of many Victorian urban and suburban areas and although the range is small at the moment, there should be enough there to allow a good spread of different types of storehouses and warehouses. The Victorians were superb when it came to building such structures and I have many hundreds of photos of real buildings from the period. The warehouse below is actually from a suburban area near Cambridge. Picking ones to try and recreate can be difficult as some of the brick and stonework was incredibly intricate and beautiful. Along with the time sent drawing such creations, painting them would also be a potential nightmare. I have intended to create a small range of generic factory machines but for the time being they are not really a priority.

With most of my ranges I try and have an 'additions' section that covers the smaller items that could be found in the various theatres/periods and the Victorian range is no different. Like pretty much all the items I do throughout the catalogue, there is some extensive research into them. I actually find this quite enjoyable as there is an awful lot to learn from any period in history when you start getting into the details. For example, when deciding on a playing surface for the Victorian games I stumbled across an article that referenced the use of an Australian hardwood, cut into hexagons and used for a brief period in various locales over London. Apparently, a timber magnet had the idea for it as the wood was considered incredibly durable and so he shipped tons and tons from Australia to London. The problem was that the wood became incredibly slippery with all the horse urine and manure and so, a large proportion of horses were being put down as they were slipping on the mess and breaking their legs. A sad and not a very satisfactory outcome so the wooden hexes were removed en masse and replaced with more typical stone setts or just compacted earth.

I have also done some scratchbuilding for some buildings as not all Victorian structures were Flemish bond brick work. Quite a few were left over from earlier centuries with some even from the 16th-17th. Wooden clapboard and rendered walls were prevalent in many areas (most of which tended to be poorer) and so I've made a few to represent this. For the rendered versions, a basic structure in card was made first, usually attached to one of the catalogue buildings, details were added with finer card and then the whole lot given a a coat of fine texture. Usually dirty white or pale cream would've been the main colours with only a few painted in something different.