All Fun and Games until Someone loses an Eye

Being in that limbo stage where I don't know really what to do I've been building some terrain boards, seems to be the vogue at the moment, maybe spring has that effect and we are gardening by proxy.
So my next terrain board is a coal mine, although it has potential for any underground terrain, especially as rail tracks have been around for hundreds of years before trains (wooden rails in mines from about 15thC and possibly earlier). The board is 60 by 45 cm so that 4 can fit on my small table, even though not being square makes orientation repetitive.
Walls and pillars are polystyrene fixed into place with small nail locating pins and PVA. The walls are then coated in plaster cloth to give stability and stop them looking like polystyrene.

The mine consists of 2 rooms and a pillar and stall mining area. Previously I'd mixed PVA into the water used to soak the plaster cloth on my other builds but this took a couple of days to dry so this time I mixed the PVA with black poster paint to undercoat the mine. Seems to work fine.

Little too shiny yet

View from the entrance

Next step was dry brushing with a mineral stone tester pot from Wilko and adding some coal in the corners.

Finally some shuttering, pit props and rails.

Really enjoyed making this and am going to make 3 more to give a fairly large mine level. On the others there will be no entrance or exit and I shall make some doors and trap doors that can be positioned randomly on each board giving me a wide range of layouts and different levels. 

Not going to clutter up this with  fixed bits of mine furniture so that I can keep the use flexible, I also like my terrain to be uncluttered if possible. I am not a great craftsman (every time I do DIY I reduce the value of my house a little bit) and whilst I admire truly beautiful terrain I often think "how do you play on that". So I developed an impressionistic style that matches my skill with some practical piece of terrain to play on that isn't a hill made of books - never, ever make the hill using the rule book you are using to fight.

This seems an appropriate song to end on Between the Wars though this was really a close second Heart of Gold . Holiday next week but staying at home so if weather's nice off to beach and castles (I do love Northumberland). If rainy then expect more mine workings.