Autumn Morning at Antietam

Rather than loafing about this Saturday morning, I took the 80-minute drive up to Harper's Ferry to tour some famous locations from War of Rights, er, the American Civil War. 

Harper's Ferry was pretty crowded by 8:30, such that I couldn't get a parking space, and thus couldn't take any pictures. It has some of the spots seen in War of Rights, and I took a ridiculously narrow road up to the church up the hill. The stone stairs are there; the walled churchyard has a large ruin in it that is not in the game, and I was almost certain I wasn't supposed to be where I was, given how narrow the street was. And I don't have a big car and thought I'd need to do some hairy, three-point turns just to take a corner. If you've been there, you may know it. I couldn't see an easy way to get to where the cemetery should have been, so I carried on back to the main street, Shenandoah Street.

Since I couldn't find parking, I couldn't take the walking trail up to the railway split. Yes, there's more Visitor Parking out of town a bit with a free shuttle, but I didn't see enough to make me want to take all that time. So I fell back to Bolivar for a lovely breakfast before taking a different route into town to see what else I could see. There's a Civil War-themed street (Potomac?), but everything was still closed my second time through. No worries, cute town, glad I saw it. On to Antietam!

Burnside's Bridge was my first target. Lovely morning, very few people around.

This is from the defensive positions on the Confederate side of the bridge

Still on the CSA side - it really is striking how narrow this thing is - an absolute funnel of death.

From the bridge looking up the embankment. In WoR, it's a good position to hide from Union artillery

In WoR, this is covered in brush and trees and where you want to position a confederate unit to prevent Union incursions to this side of the river. 

The tops are just wood.

Here's where many CSA units congregate when Union units make their push. It usually has piles of bodies all over it.

The scyamore - witness to history - still standing and healthy.

From the Union side

Good resource for painting stone work - very valuable since it doesn't say ALAMY all over it. 

Next, I drive over to the Sunken Road/Bloody Lane: 

More excellent stonework references - note the tops are flat. 

There are a number of names for this type of fencing that are so common in the DMV and Pennsylvania areas. Split rail, worm, snake or buck and rail. The last is probably most associated with these with the Xs at the corners. There'll be a lot of good resource pics below for modelers out there. 

One thing hard to see unless you are right on top of them is how tight the angle is. As a hobbyist I want to imply lengths of fencing while using as few materials as possible. That usually means from a top-down view, it's more flat than jagged. In reality, the angles are closer to 60 degrees, which would make the width of a fence base very thick indeed, requiring an awful lot of rails.

Sorry - finger in the frame at top left!

Here are some shots for the modelers who want a better sense of the construction of these fences. Recall I did a tutorial here. My angles are not as tight and I would paint them entirely differently today. I also recall fiddling with the X-beams, but I couldn't figure out how to model the ends so they could be connected to the fence next to it, so I opted for simpler versions. 

Fences are not brown. Wood is often not brown. If the sculpting is detailed enough, this looks like a Black/brown (ProAcryl?) with a light gray dry brushed over it.  

From here I head over to Dunker/Dunkard Church.

Patches of "rough terrain" - Note to self: get some rust colored tufts. It's important that gamer/modelers go outside once in a while and observe the colors and textures one sees in nature. Even I don't get grass quite right. 

Oh bugger! And on No Kings day too. 

Seeing this thing for the first time with my own eyes was quite an experience. 50 years ago I saw the famous image of this church in half the Civil War books I had and would pick up over the years. Amazing to think they were selling ice cream and sandwiches out of it in the 1950-60s. 

Seriously, god bless the American Battlefield Trust and all the preservationists who raise money and maintain this and all the historic sites around the country. Without these good folks fighting to save these places, we'd be allowing future generations to forget, not through malice, but simply because the evidence of our history would be paved over and gone.

I don;t know if the doors are normally open, but I did get some terrible shots through the window as I wound my way around the place. 

One last look ...

As I alluded, this was just a quick jaunt to see the highlights. I saw the Sherrick and Otto farms, too, but there was too much vegetation to get clear shots from the car. I may have also missed the Cornfield, so I'll have to go back and do it properly. War of Rights does a good job of teaching the history of this engagement between fights, but I really would like to read more in-depth to appreciate all the locations, signage, and memorials. It's got to be impossible to comprehend the place without coming to it with more background under your belt. 

As always, thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged! I'm doing more and more on Facebook so follow my page there too! https://www.facebook.com/One-of-My-Men-Became-Restless-100659928063858