Making Culverts

Rules for culverts for Chain of Command first make an appearance in the 1940 Blitzkrieg Handbook and they feature in one of the scenarios in the Taking the Gembloux Gap campaign.

I wondered how best to make these in a way that would be as practical as possible. In particular I wanted something that I could place anywhere along my roads to suit the needs of any given scenario. In a moment of inspiration I thought, why not use the idea of bookends for a simple and practical solution?

Essentially the culvert comes in two parts, one for each side of the road and they can be placed at any point along a road. Their construction was very simple.

The walls of the culvert themselves are made from a piece of cork floor tile. This is a strong material that is easy to cut and glue with the added benefit that it has a natural stone texture. Once I had decided the overall size all that was needed was to cut out a shape to represent the culvert tunnel. Lastly, to add some character I then roughed up the edges of the cork with a sharp blade to show some age and wear.

The base was a piece of MDF. I use the sanding tool on my Dremel to chamfer the edges so that they would blend into any terrain cloth. The same tool was used to to create a water channel. The cork was then glued to the base using PVA glue. That was followed by added some texture with sand before painting and flocking. The water effect in the channel was simply a line of PVA glue which dries clear and glossy.

The two sections can then be place at whatever point along the road is appropriate for the scenario. As you can see from the pictures below they were first used in a game for the second scenario in the Gembloux Gap campaign The Culverts at Noirmont.