À la Recherche du Temps Perdu

In common with many collectors, I suspect I'm not alone in having had a previous pre-digital attempt to photograph my collection.  Prior to this present effort to build a diorama of Waterloo, I had a model built in sections totalling about 5,000 figures.  Eventually, a combination of dissatisfaction with its size (too small), combined with the opposite difficulty that it was too big to cart around the world, led me to dismantle it in 1999.

All of the figures are now being incorporated into the present model, but I thought it would be fun to show my efforts of that time.

The figures were mostly plastic Airfix, Esci, Italieri, with metal Hinton Hunt, Kennington, Newline, RSM and Qualicast.

In many ways, this was a fairly naive depiction of the battle.  But in its simplicity, there was a certain satisfaction and I look back on it with a certain fondness.

Revell converted from Seven Year War artillery train

Old Guard with La Belle Alliance in the background

La Belle Alliance.  I've now got a better version of this in production, to be revealed soon.

Two Kennington Chasseurs

British Gunners flee - converted from some Airfix WW2 figures

Cuirassiers

D'Erlon's Corps advance past the Airfix La Haie Sainte

Wellington's staff

The view southwards

Marshal New

Guard Colonel - converted from a War of Independence figure

French prisoners and British wounded head to the rear

Cavalry charge past La Haie Sainte

Dutch Hussars counter attack

British squares

French cavalry

The whole model

British guns