Prepping for Camerone Day +150...

A week from today -- on Tuesday, April 30, 2013 -- myself and a dozen or so fellow "Cameronistas" shall find ourselves engaged in an epic struggle, of 28m miniature proportions, refighting the greatest battle of la Legion Etrangere.  

However, I still have a few things on my Camerone Day "TO-DO" list:

(1)    base & terrain and paint the new bases for a bunch of very nice PALM TREES I bought a month or two ago;

(2)    build a short-end 2'x2' sq. terrain board so we will be able to fit the abandoned dam onto the layout in its historical position without the table being overly cramped;

(3)     repair 3 damaged corners on my pre-existing Maiwand Day terrain boards;

(4)    effect modest repairs to spots spread across the Maiwand Day boards which have sustained wear-&-tear damage over the past year-and-a-half or so;

(5)    build some overlays to put atop one or two of the nullahs on my Maiwand boards, so they can better play the part as flat ground-cover -- if I manage to pull this off in a decent-looking & useable fashion, it will come in very handy for future games requiring flat ground more than 4' x 6', which is the largest clear flat ground I can arrange using my terrain boards right now;

(6)    clean up and clean out my office-turned-"Camerone Day"-game-room so there's enough space for the dozen or so players I expect to put in a showing on April 30th;

(7)    ...exhale and try hard not to collapse while doing so!!!

Stay turned for some visual updates as and when I can manage them -- and please wish me LUCK, 'cause I'm definitely gonna' need it...

***Here's a first batch of pics.  I've managed to get the palm trees done, as well as a handful of other trees I had sitting around meant for Afghanistan, which will fit well in Mexico as well, plus I've gotten about a third of the way through the additional little terrain board:

Then the box with the T-shirts arrived...

Now back to the table...

Prepping the 2'x2' expansion board...

The Hacienda cometh...

Today was my first day off in many weeks.  As my wife has been out of town visiting relatives in New York & New Jersey, I used it to take care of a lot of domestic duties and chores, culminating in a trip to the airport to pick her up.  All went well, and when we got home, what was waiting to greet my eyes, after being delivered -- perfectly intact I hasten to add -- by UPS all the way from Ontario, Canada to Los Angeles, California, USA... well of course you the answer to that one:

THE HADIENCA DE LA TRINIDAD

...as recreated in 28mm scale by Chris Riordan, aka: Chris The Model Maker.

IMHO it's pretty dang sweet.

Packed in a second, smaller, box was the abandoned hotel located by most accounts on the North side of the Convoy Road, across from the Hacienda building itself.  I'll try to put more picks of both buildings up here tomorrow, but for now, I hope you enjoy the lone view above!

Decrepit DAM, abandoned Mexican village bldgs, & Indian dwellings

Here are some pics of the remaining CAMERONE DAY pieces built by Chris The Model Maker...

First up is the abandoned and out of use DAM, built to distribute water brought from the nearby river via a small manmade canal for use irrigating surrounding farmland and as drinking water for horses and farm animals, before fighting grew endemic, chasing the landowners away and putting their farms and ranches out of business:

Next up are the still-occupied local INDIAN DWELLINGS:

And finally, the forsaken buildings of the Mexican village of "Camaron," abandoned like the nearby canal when fighting in the area grew too heavy for the local inhabitants to endure*:

*NOTE:  This occured during the "War of the Reform" fought from 1857-1860, a Mexican  civil conflict pitting Liberal and Conservative Mexican forces against each other.  Though the main Conservative armies surrendered in 1860, many Conservative guerillas remained active in the field, and a few years later Conservative forces planned their alliance with Emperor Napoleon III, which helped trigger his Intervention and bring Maximillian Hapsburg of Austro-Hungary to Mexico, to be installed as the ill-fated Emperor Maximillian I.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT WIKIPEDIA PAGE ON THE MEXICAN REFORM WAR

The reason there was so much fighting in the immediate vicinity of CAMARON was the MAIN ROAD around which the village had grown into existence, which connected Vera Cruz -- on the Atlantic Coast to the East -- with Puebla to the West.

PICS FROM THE MASTER BUILDER...

It's been a packed couple of weeks here at the "Camerone Day" household.  My middle child had her Bat Mitzvah -- the big coming-of-age event in the life of a Jewish child -- two Saturdays ago.  Like her older brother before her, she did a wonderful job and made my wife, myself, and our entire family extremely proud.  As with many big events, the hidden prize was the chance to see friends and family from all over the world who took the time to come and visit for the occassion.

Meanwhile, across the continent, in Ontario, Canada, a certain master model-maker completed the last components for the fast-approaching 150th Anniversary "Camerone Day" game, adding even more excitement to my life.  If that sounds a little out of whack, feast your eyes on the visual evidence below...

First up, the abandoned HOTEL located on the North side of the road, across from the Hacienda de la Trinidad:

Next, the Hacienda compound itself:

Together with the abandoned dam, the decrepit Mexican village buildings, and the Indian huts, this completes all the structures required to refight "CAMERONE" from start to finish.  My next update should occur when the first of these models arrives here at my place.

Real world irrigation canal DAM in New Mexico...

Not long after putting the pics of the abandoned dam model up on this blog, I ran across a pic of a real life version that was very close, though somewhat different, in design, which in this case appears to date back to about the turn of the 20th Century.  I had never heard of the "Acequias" of New Mexico before, but you learn something new every day...

The property in Albuquerque, New Mexico can be irrigated through the 100 year old system of "Acequias" which are "Communal Irrigation Canals" pretty unique to New Mexico.  The canals branch off of the Rio Grande, and you make a request to the "canal boss" and he can bring more water down the canal and divert it to flood your property through these old gates you see below.

ABANDONED DAM

There's a lot of excitement here at my place -- and it's not because of the Superbowl later today, since as a Giants & Patriots fan, with a soft spot for the Green Bay Packers, as well as the Chargers -- who I occasionally drive 2.5 hours South to see play in San Diego -- I couldn't care much less about either the Baltimore Ravens or the San Francisco 49ers!  I will watch, and hope for a good game, but what's got me excited is I just received the first pictures of one of the "scenic" components of this project from Chris The Model Maker/AKA: Chris Riordan of Ontario, Canada, and needless to say, they look great!

I think Chris's model of the decrepit, unmaintained DAM located not far from the Hacienda compound at the center of the battle of Camerone, turned out fantastic.

I described the dam in an email to Chris, same as in one of my first posts to this blog --

V. Abandoned dam

Back before the previous war (the “War of the Reform”, which was a Mexican civil war that preceded the French intervention) this area was home to profitable agriculture and animal husbandry. The dam was used to control water brought from a nearby river via a manmade waterway, and disperse it to the neighboring farms for irrigation of fields and watering of livestock. But since the road from the coast to Mexico City runs through the area, as the wars dragged on and fighting and pillaging became incessant, the local farms stopped operating, leaving the manmade waterway to largely dry up and become overgrown in some places. But the dam still sat there. I figure it’s made mostly of rocks from the nearby river, together with packed dirt, wide enough at the top for a man or even a drought animal to walk across from one side to the other, with sloping ramps at each side to enable this (though one or both ramps may now be somewhat dilapidated or damaged). When it was in active use maybe there was a simple wooden railing made from split posts lining one or both edges, but by now most of that wood has been stolen away or fallen apart, but there might still be a few pieces of it standing up.

The dam is the only tricky piece in terms of how to size and base it, since everything else is either a building or a collection of buildings linked together with walls. The good thing is since the water has mostly dried up from lack of maintenance, it doesn’t have to be too big. If the dam itself is 1.5”-2” wide x 6”-8” long it will just need a hollow, dry channel dug-out of the earth (and perhaps overgrown with weeds, grass, etc.) on one side, and the start of several smaller such channels on the other side, which used to be for spreading the river water out amongst the locals but have since also dried up from lack of maintenance. So something like 8” x 8” altogether, with the dam and the now unused manmade waterways on both sides.

-- but Chris asked for a picture, so I spent some time struggling to produce a sketch, which forced me to think more about how the canal-fed irrigation system tied in to the dam might have actually worked.  I did some research and did my best with the sketch, which was still somewhat "sketchy" -- but I think Chris turned it into something great!

So without further ado, please feast your eyes...