Largest Diorama?

I agree w/ M.R. ... I think that the larger the dio gets the harder it is to tell a specific story...

Not to down play a great overall dio for Omaha Beach, but rather you don't get the real .... intimate sides of the stories that went on during that time. For example, like a chaplian reading the last rights to someone on the beach under fire, or the doc trying to perform surgery on a hopeless case and under fire. I think that larger dios have a place, but are really meant for the "ooos and ahhhs" factor at places like a museum.

As far as the largest dio I've ever seen ... not in person, but a few years back, someone was trying to sell a large D-Day Beach dio for about $5000. I think it was something like 20' in length by about 10' wide. I don't remember how may vehicles or figures, etc it had but it looked pretty busy. Again, good for an overall dio, but just way too big to tell any specific stories.

Good luck on that one .....

capnluki wrote:

Does anybody know what the record is for the largest diorama built?  I don't mean just the base measurements, but the scale as well.  I am currently building a 1/35 scale diorama of Omaha Beach on a 2'x3' base.  I am keeping the unit insignias correct for the beach and even putting in a heavy mg bunker for hill 64.  Other than the models, everything is scratch built.  The total estimated cost is over $600.  If anyone knows, please respond.

In 1/35th scale, a 2 x 3 ft base in just large enough for a good 1/48th scale B-17 diorama.. In 1/35th, a P-47 and a truck or two..

You're only talking about an area that's 70 x 105 scale feet in 1/35th scale..Omaha Beach was over 6 miles wide...

Even in HO scale (1/87th), your Omaha Beach diorama would have be over 364 feet wide, or a  football field and both end zones, plus change

That said, you CAN get away with a model railroader technique called "Selective Compression".. For example, a typical paved 2-lane highway is 100 feet wide between fence lines. This is 13 or so inches wide... You could get away with making it narrower, say 6-8 inches and still pull it off, but that's about as low as you can go...

Hans von Hammer wrote:

capnluki wrote: Does anybody know what the record is for the largest diorama built?  I don't mean just the base measurements, but the scale as well.  I am currently building a 1/35 scale diorama of Omaha Beach on a 2'x3' base.  I am keeping the unit insignias correct for the beach and even putting in a heavy mg bunker for hill 64.  Other than the models, everything is scratch built.  The total estimated cost is over $600.  If anyone knows, please respond. In 1/35th scale, a 2 x 3 ft base in just large enough for a good 1/48th scale B-17 diorama.. In 1/35th, a P-47 and a truck or two.. You're only talking about an area that's 24.5 x 36.75 scale feet in 1/35th scale (122.5 square scale feet)... That's barely enough room to put a 5-man infantry fire-team on with scale tactical separation..  You aren't gonna model much more than a portion of a hillside, much less the entire hill in that scale... It'd be part of a mound, at best.. Omaha Beach was over 6 miles wide... Even in HO scale (1/87th), your Omaha Beach diorama would be over 364 feet wide, or a  football field and both end zones, plus change...

Edited.. Thanks, Manny... Guess that's why God invented calculators..

I know you won't belive me but I think the dio of the battle of Waterloo in the Natonal Army Musium in London would be the bigest. I saw It year ago and my numbers may not be corect but the best my mom and I could remember was that it was something like 20 feet by 20 feet with over 20,000 lead cast figures?? in 1/100 scale or smaller but I'm not sure because we were not allowed photos but I know it was HUGE!! Mabye someone has the correct numbers or lives in London and can tell us the correct size.

Another big one was the 1/72 ?? world war one dio in the Impirial war musium in London.

stick man wrote:

I know you won't belive me but I think the dio of the battle of Waterloo in the Natonal Army Musium in London would be the bigest. I saw It year ago and my numbers may not be corect but the best my mom and I could remember was that it was something like 20 feet by 20 feet with over 20,000 lead cast figures?? in 1/100 scale or smaller but I'm not sure because we were not allowed photos but I know it was HUGE!! Mabye someone has the correct numbers or lives in London and can tell us the correct size. Another big one was the 1/72 ?? world war one dio in the Impirial war musium in London.

capnluki wrote:

you are correct, if I was to build the entire beach I would need more story behind it.  However, I am only building the specific emplacement that was destroyed by the Big Red 1.  As well, I can fit 6 M3A1 Stuart tanks end to end longways, about 4.5 wide.

M-3A1 Stuarts weren't used during the Normandy invasion.

Bronto wrote:

capnluki wrote: you are correct, if I was to build the entire beach I would need more story behind it.  However, I am only building the specific emplacement that was destroyed by the Big Red 1.  As well, I can fit 6 M3A1 Stuart tanks end to end longways, about 4.5 wide.   M-3A1 Stuarts weren't used during the Normandy invasion.

Repeating myself:

Check your references...I don't think there were any Stuarts used on D-Day. There were a few Shermans at Omaha, but most of them did not reach the shore.

"The plan was to land infantry troops alongside armoured vehicles - amphibious Sherman tanks. Such a potent armoured force on the beach would have given the Americans far greater fire power against the Germans. However, the Shermans (DD tanks) never made it. It is now known that the 29 tanks were released from their landing craft too far away from the beach. There was a much greater swell further out to sea than the Americans had bargained on and all but two of the DD's were swamped with water very soon after leaving their landing craft. Once they started to sink, nothing could be done to help them or the crew."

Source: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/omaha_beach.htm

"In U.S. Army service, the M3 first saw combat in the Philippines. A small number fought in the Bataan peninsula campaign. When the American army joined the North African Campaign in late 1942, Stuart units still formed a large part of its armor strength. After the disastrous Battle of the Kasserine Pass the US quickly followed the British in disbanding most of their light tank battalions and subordinating the Stuarts to medium tank battalions as scouting and screening units. For the rest of the war, most US tank battalions had three companies of M4 Shermans and one company of M3s or M5/M5A1s.

In the European theater, the light tanks had to be given secondary roles since they could not compete with most enemy AFVs."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_tank

Of course, if you're only interested in your own ideas and not in what the people here are offering...

smeagol the vile wrote:

Uh, I think he may have been just using the stewart as a measuring tool, to say how big the thing is

From his first creating fire post:

I'm currently working on a diorama of Omaha Beach.  I have all the models and tools I can think of, and am making impressive headway.  However, concerning a Stuart tank, I would like to set one of the gas cans aflame.  Or, at least its appearance.  I have tried plastic rap, tin foil, string, and brushed cotton to no avail.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

capnluki wrote:

However, the specific emplacement that the Big Red 1 took was a much smaller area.  not going for the whole beach.  that would be a museum quality piece.

The 1st ID's (along with two regiments of the 29th ID) sectors on Omaha Beach were Easy Red and Fox Green, an area about 1 & 3/4 miles wide, hardly a "much smaller area" when it's about a third of the beach.

Anyway, your question about a "record" for diorama sizes, I don't know of any official record-keeping that goes on, but I routinely built 1/35th dioramas of the size you're talking about in the 80s & 90s...  I can't build large ones anymore due to space being at a premium in my current place, but I have 2 WIPs that are 2 feet by 3 feet, one a 1/48th B-17 crash site, the other a 1/48th B-29 & hardstand (Enola Gay on her Tinian hardstand at around 0300 6 AUG 1945, which is almost a direct copy of Shep Paine's Enola Gay) diorama..  Also have a (mostly) 1/35th WIP of a downed Soviet Spitfire set with the Wirbelwind that got it and a dozen or so troops & their truck looking for the pilot..

This one measures about 2 & 1/2 feet x 2 feet, and you can see how crowded it is...

I'm not gonna try and tell ya what to do, but I do think that you're going to run into all kinds of issues with size...  I'd like to see your mock-up... (You ARE doing a mock-up, right?)  Even if you decide to change it to HO or 1/72 scale, it's gonna be a tough build.. Frankly, I don't think it'll work in 1/35th with that size of a base...Especially the terrain model... But I've been wrong before...

this one seems quite big

Guiness world record

If I attempt another "largest" think I'll use a combonation of 1/72 and 1/48 to give it a sense of depth.

You're talking about a "forced perspective" diorama... You need to build those in shadow boxes so the viewpoint is restricted...  If you build it in the open, it'll look like what it is, a bunch of mixed-scale pieces on a base...

Yeah, I know how they work, I build shadow boxes fairly frequently... Have one under construction right now for the "Hollywood Goes to War" Group Build.. It's Stachel's shoot-down scene from "The Blue Max" in which he gets shot down by SE5's in his Phalz saving Von Richtofen's life.  After the crash, the wounded Stachel's standing, looking at the Baron's Triplane, as it flies over him and his burning Phalz, it waggles it's wings at him and he mouths, "You sonuvab*tch" at him...

Pretty funny scene.. Using the 1/28th scale figure from Revell's DR 1, 1/48th Eduard Phalz DIII, and 1/72 Monogram DR 1...

JMHO, but I think the Shadow Box is the ultimate form of the diorama..  Being able to control perspective, veiwpoints, lighting, and weather ya know..

Yours sounds like a good idea... Like to see the mock-up...

I'm considering painting some cheese cloth in greys and hanging that over the front of the shadow box to simulate fog.  Not sure how this will work, but it's trial and error.  As for the lighting, I want to put some orange and yellow model train LEDs in to simulate the flash of the mussles. 

Oh, and yes, I do care about facts.  I have seen many pictures of Stuarts bogged down just inland of Normandy.  And, the fact that there were LCMs to carry armor, I assumed that the Stuart came ashore via them.  Thanks for the link.

capnluki wrote:

Oh, and yes, I do care about facts.  I have seen many pictures of Stuarts bogged down just inland of Normandy.

Where have you seen many pictures of US M-3 Stuarts (any variant) bogged down in Normandy?

I want to put some orange and yellow model train LEDs in to simulate the flash of the mussles.

Clams don't flash...

Animating shadow boxes (and dioramas in general) always sounds like a good idea, and is, in theory, but it doesn't work well in practice, since the main subject(s) is static...  As for using cheesecloth for fog, it'll look like you're looking through a camo-net rather than fog... You'd be better off using a piece of clear acetate lightly misted with clear flat...