I finished assembling a model of a drawbridge last night (when I should have been working on a scenario for my Saturday game...) This model was put together from pieces taken from several sets in the World Works line.

I do not have a digital camera, so I cannot add pictures to illustrate what I did, but...

What it Looks like:

Four small towers flanking  the approaches to the bridge. Two separate drawbridges meeting in the middle. Lengths of chain run from slits in the tower to near the end of the bridge pieces.

Sets Used:
Village Works, Castle Works (or Arena Works), Interior Works: Pubs & Taverns.

Making the Pieces:

The Towers: On my model I cut down the towers from Castle Works, creating towers 2 inches wide on a side, however the towers from Arena Works would have worked much better, already being the right size. For some reason it just didn't occur to me at the time... For those without Arena Works cut the height of the tower down so that it runs from the top of the tower to the bottom of the upper doorway. Cut the walls of the tower to a width of 2 inches centered around the arrow slit.   You will need three copies of this wall and one with the doorway for each tower. For longer bridges you would need a taller tower and would have to mask the upper doorway somehow, I would recommend banners of some sort.

If you want to be able to raise and lower the drawbridge then punch a hole in the wall about 1 inch from the edge of one of the arrowslitted walls for each tower. Use the Basic Bridge from the Village Works set as a guide and make the hole about 1/2 of an inch above where the top of the bridge will be. This will be the inside piece. Punch a hole in one of the arrowslits, right at the bottom on one of the other tower walls. This will be the side facing the gap. Put a hole protector for hole punched sheets around the hole on the white side of the sheet.

The section with the door can either be facing away from the gap or away from the bridge.

Number of Towers Needed - 4.

The Approach: I cut the end off of the Basic Bridge model from Village Works, leaving the approach and two squares of the length. Do not discard the remaining section of the bridges - you will need them in a few seconds! (I did throw them out, but was able to recover them...)

Glue between two of the towers to finish each approach. Use the pieces remaining from the two unused section of the bridge to mask the area exposed and showing white. (Told you you'd need them!)

Number Needed of Approaches - 2.

The Auld Grump, who has found he can't edit without splitting it up...

The Drawbridge: Cut 4 equal lengths of wooden floors from the Interior Works: Pubs & Taverns set to the desired size. I made mine 3 inches wide and as long as the fences from Village Works.

These fences were used in lieu of railings for the bridge, adding strength and shape to the bridge. Fold the bottom tabs so that they go the same direction rather than spreading them out. Sandwich the tabs between two layers of the flooring from above. If you want to be able to raise and lower the drawbride then punch a hole about 1 inch from the end of each length of fence. and put a paper fastener through the hole before gluing the sides of the fence together. If you need a bit of extra strength then fasten a hole protector for three ring binder paper over the hole on the inside.

Repeat for the other half of the bridge.

Number Needed - 2 total.

Finishing the Model:

Attach the bridge to the tower with either white glue, or if you are going to be able to raise and lower the bridge then using the paper fasteners. It should overlap about 1 inch of the basic bridge inside of the approach.

Run a length of chain from the arrow slit to the floor of the bridge about 1 inch from the end of the bridge. If you want to be able to raise and lower the bridge then place attach a either washer or a fishing weight (if you have any) to the end of the chain inside of the tower so that it will be pulled down when the bridge goes up. I used a couple of necklaces from the dollar store for the chain.

You should now have two identical half drawbridges. If you want a permanent structure then fasten them both to your masterboard over a river section. This is recommended if you are going to be able to open and close the drawbridge, otherwise it is way to likely to tip over. (Trust me, I know...)

If you wish to be able to use them separately you should mount the approach to a section of Masterboard cut to accept each approach and about 2 inches around it, except on the bridge side where it should be about 1 inch wide instead. Add a weight on the inside of the each tower by gluing the weight to the masterboard before placing the tower. This weight should be at least twice as heavy as all the models that will be on the bridge at the same time. (I used a few ingots of lead I had lying around. (Don't ask.)) You will also need to fashion a small approach using The Basic Bridge from Village Works. (Cut one end of the bridge off again, then mount to a small masterboard.)

The resulting model will accept the weight of an entire regiment of plastic miniatures from GW, about 5 human sized metal models, as long as they aren't all clumped near the end of the bridge, or one ogre sized metal model.

Hope folks have fun with this.

Things that might be fun: Combining this with the gatehouse from Castle Works on a battle board sculpted from insulation foam.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* I added a popsicle stick support onder both ends of the span, with a balsa wood beam connecting them, placing an ogre near the end started bending the bridge into a 'U' shape widthwise. If I do this again I will attach the chains to this wooden support instead of the bridge, there is definetly some strengthening needed. Making a Tower Bridge

*EDIT* And I just sold the original. I used it for a demonstration game of D&D Miniatures and one of the players decided that he wanted to take it home. The model stood up to having four battles during the demo, the plastic D&D minis putting very little stress on the model, though no one tried to close the bridge to keep the other side out, preferring to have battles for control of the span, so I don't know how the rising and lowering of the bridge will affect the wear and tear on the span or the holes for chain.

I had originally planned on keeping it, bridges, stairs, and other choke points beiing my favorite battlegrounds.

However this will give me a chance to try it using Arena Works instead of Castle Works for the towers.

The Auld Grump

I finished remaking the tower bridge last week using the towers from Arena Works, and it was indeed much easier.

But somehow not as soul satisfying, whether because it was a remake, or because it was just so much easier is anybody's guess.

And when I went to edit the title of this thread I was told that the text on the first entry was too long, so I ended up splitting the article up. (I decided on a more self explanatory title...)

The Auld Grump