Marksburg

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Need I say more?

Quite a lot has happened already. The first steps are quite straightforward. Cut and fold the first handful of parts and join them in numerical order. Unlike Pardubice, there are no recessed windows or doors. The white square in the courtyard is for the tower. At this point, I made a note to comment on the top of the buildings. With S&S they have what could be called a loft floor; it holds the tall walls rigidly and I expected these to help when it came to the roof.

This shows one of the few diagrams for parts placement. There are not many like this, but they are sufficient to guide the build.

Not very exciting, but it struck me that up to this point I hadn't taken any pictures of the parts. It also reminded me that the fold lines are shown as dotted lines, but unlike a lot of other kits the dot and dash line shows the position for gluing the next part. It even has the number of the piece to be glued there in red, a nice touch. Although for a while I found it difficult not to put the pieces on my light box and score the reverse side!

These are the pillars that attach to the wall in the previous picture. As you can see, each pillar consists of three sides and two tabs. The small piece at the top is the only guide to keeping the pillars square to the wall.

This is how I prefer to tackle this sort of situation. I cut off all the tabs and use a piece of card the same thickness as the pillar. This way it stays in the shape I want and is so much easier to glue in place.

As you can see, we have moved on quite a bit since the previous picture. You haven't missed much, since the main building is basically 12 inner and outer walls surrounding the courtyard. As you will see in this picture, we are now homing in on the loft floors and attaching the roofs. I must admit that despite having the lofts, the roofs were a little disappointing in their fit.

You will note from the picture of the real castle on the cover, Marksburg, like most of the castles on the Rhine, is built on top of a hill. To be more precise, it's the top of the cliff that is the gorge formed by the river. So, to partly reproduce this the parts shown form the outer wall that forms the path up from the entrance gate (and shop!) to the main entrance of the castle.

Here are some of the pieces already in place. It is a simple matter of gluing the paths to the castle walls then gluing on the outer wall with the stone work. The path fits quite well to the walls but my main problem was that the outer wall and the stones forming part of the hill do not match at the joins.

This shows the side wall. The top is folded to give a squared off "P" shape, and the top of the "P" forms the parapet, which is glued to the path.

This is the round tower that sits on top of the square tower. As you can see, I have followed my usual method with towers by using templates that fit inside. This keeps them symmetrical and easier to position.

A few more pieces to show that things haven't changed! These make the tower that can be seen on the left of the first picture of the completed castle. The parts are a bit of a cheat, because there is the lower square tower and the round top is simply stretched round.

I have included this piece because it took me ages to figure out how it should have been folded! This is one piece, and there is a drawing on the back to show how it should go together. The problem is that once you fold the piece you can't see the drawing for the next fold and the drawing itself is a little obscure. It forms the bridge between the large square tower and a dormer window in the main building.

A page of dormers and chimneys. As you can see from the overhead view at the end, there is little room for maneuvering the inner dormers. So, as I said in the introduction, I completed the main tower per the instructions, (which only tell you to "make up the parts in numerical order") but did not put it in place until the end.

An example of "tab overload." Although the card is not very heavy, the parts are so small and the card thick enough to make it possible to butt join the dormers. I feel that this way gives a sharper finish to the part.

The platform that is part of the entrance can be seen on the cover of the kit. In my usual manner I had to cut out the areas between the railings. However, the main reason for this picture is to show the extra piece I had to put at the back of the platform. As you will see the railings are longer than the platform is deep. This would leave a large gap between the platform and the entrance. I can't remember if this was how it was on the real castle, but with my appreciation of "health and safety" I had to "bridge the gap."