Waterloo Farm – La Haye Sainte
Airfix 1:76 Scale Scenery Review
The Airfix model of the Waterloo Farm La Haye Sainte is a cheap plastic model kit which looks good when painted and based. The farm is great for dioramas and skirmish wargames, and it may be used to represent an entire village in grand-tactical simulation games. The model kit may be improved by strengthening the walls and replacing the plastic doors with more realistically textured parts made from balsa or plywood. The yard may be detailed by adding farm animals, implements, wagons, woodpiles, supplies, and many other things one would expect to see here. In preparation for the Battle of Waterloo, La Haye Sainte farm was loopholed to allow the defending infantry to fire from relative safety.
Contents
- Waterloo Farm – La Haye Sainte
- 400 mm length equals 30 m
- 208 mm width equals 15.8 m
- 75 mm height equals 5.7 m
- 1.5 mm wall thickness equals 11.5 cm
- Farm Wagon
- Hay-cart
- Woodpile
- Farm Implements
- Crates and Barrels
- Barricade
Evaluation
Excellent choice of subject, La Haye Sainte farm played a key role in the Battle of Waterloo and it can be the subject of an attractive diorama.
The model is not a perfect scale representation of the historic La Haye Sainte farm, but it’s good enough to satisfy wargamers and beginning diorama builders.
Few parts, easy to assemble. The farm is a snap-together model, but it looks much better when glued together and mounted on an attractive base.
The walls are too thin. Proper scale thickness should be 3 mm for the courtyard, garden and building walls. The courtyard and garden walls may be strengthened by glueing sections of cardboard or plastic card to the back of each one.
The courtyard, garden and building walls are modelled with exposed brickwork, even though the exterior walls of the actual La Haye Sainte farm were plastered and whitewashed.
The gateway should be flush with the exterior of the courtyard. To fix the mistake, cut the gateway out of the eastern wall section and move it back 20 mm.
The gateway arch is modelled incorrectly on the outside. Serious modellers will want to build a proper gateway from scratch, using only the plastic roof from the kit.
Holes in the snap-together roof sections need to be filled prior to painting.
The farmhouse should be improved by adding window frames and clear plastic windows. Otherwise the building looks like a gutted ruin with flimsy walls.
The Waterloo Farm of La Haye Sainte is a great plastic model kit to get figure collectors interested in dioramas and skirmish wargames. Serious modellers will want to build their own replica of La Haye Sainte from scratch.