ANYONE MAKE A SCALE ARMY BARRACKS?

Menard garage is identical.

Andre.

Actually, that's a quonset (or in England it was called a Nissen) hut. A barracks stateside was usually a wood, 2-story, open-bay building with a stairwell on one end with a latrine area at the same end. They usually had a partial roof over the sides on the first floor, with large windows all down the sides.

Some Army posts still have them almost unmodified from their WW2 years with the exception of siding over the wood sides and tile/linoleum floors installed in the 50s.

I have stayed in several of these during my time in the Army and before that, as a WW2 re-enactor. Sadly, most of the last of these are being removed from even the old national guard bases which had the most of them (for example, Indiantown Gap, PA just took down a large field of them).

Nobody makes a kit in O scale that I'm aware of. Gotta warn you, these were BIG structures, deceptively so. A model would take up a lot of real estate.

P51 Those are the type I stayed in.  

Me, too. My nephew, a newly-minted Army 2LT as of last summer, went through ROTC camp at Fort Lewis and they still use those barracks at North Fort for that, the very same barracks I went through in the very same training in the 90s.

I used to do WW2 re-enacting events in the South and Benning had massive fields of them as late as the 90s. When I went back there in 2010, they were all gone.

But if you look around, you can still find a few of them.

Watch the movies, "Biloxi Blues" or, "A Soldier's Story" to see a decent representation of what they looked like in WW2. Both were filmed at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas when they still had a huge field of them maintain almost to the original specs. Many of them were torn and burned down since then and very few that remain there are in decent shape now:

I was in that type of barracks at Ft. Bragg.

Wow, just like 1st Bn at Parris Island in 1966. Only we could run up and down on outside stairs from ground to 2nd floor.

The last time I visited only one left out of I think 4 counting the mess hall. It was a graduation of one of my sons high school buddies.

It was also (HISTORY) the FIRST time ever that FEMALE recruits graduated with the male recruits on the 1st Bn parade deck together.  Lots of heavy Navy and Marine brass that day.

Larry

I had to say all that Sorry

Not sure if this is scale...

Marx Barracks

Jerry

Wow, not bad but from the brick behind it, I think that's S scale. It sure doesn't look O to me at all.

Whatever scale it is, if you spliced two of them together and did a good paint job, it's make a decent model.

Never knew that model existed, interesting.

Okay, just found that the Marx model is 1/72 according to this:

http://www.michtoy.com/item-MX...y_Barracks_Army.html

Do a google search and you'll find plenty of decent models of a WW2 barracks...

...but none in O scale of course.

Thanks, p51. I have been searching.

Lee:

When were those built? The ones out at Ft. MacArthur (now Angels Gate Park)  date back to 1917 and  have a different style. By the way, our building is the single-story one on the lower right next to the trees. It used to be the Quartermaster's office/quarters. The actual color of the buildings was a strange sandstone color, except for the ones those hippies in the Cultural Center painted yellow.

Very few of the WW1-pattern ones exist today.

The pre-war WW2 design is pretty much what's been posted here, and they were built by the thousands all over the US from the start of the 'national emergency' with the draft by 1940. Sadly, most were gone by the 80s and 90s and only a handful exist today in their original WW2 configuration as most that still exist had the lower 'roof' portion removed, siding put over the wood, the ends redesigned and new flooring and latrines put in, probably sometime in the 50s and 60s. They also had the coal stoves and/or steam heat lines removed long before then in most cases. There were lots of other changes, but these are the major ones.

Fort Benning's Infantry museum has a complete, "WW2 company street" with represenations of all the cantonment building types on the post moved into one spot, then all restored back to their WW2 configuration. I went to that museum in 2010 with my Dad, but sadly they only had it open for guided tours, which were cancelled that day to bad weather. I never got closer than about 150 yards. I'm still seething over that.

It has what could be the best preserved WW2 barracks groupings in existence:

More info on this here: http://www.nationalinfantrymus...r-ii-company-street/

Thanks for the info. Fort Mac remained in active use up until 1974, and was turned over to the City on the provision that it remain unchanged and used for cultural and community purposes (I think to keep it restorable to operation if necessary). Sometime during its life, they added the pool (over on the left) which fell into disrepair after the City closed it. They're restoring it and reconfiguring the east end of the park around it. Looks like it will be pretty nice when they're done.

Lee

Here is the old staircase I was referring to at PI.

Funny now, wasn't to dang funny then. Picture don't show the DI's foot up somebody's..... $$$     well, you know.

Larry

Thanks.  As it happens I need two of those and a bit smaller than scale is okay for where I'm putting them.

Very cool.  My wife lived in one of those when she was a kid.  Her mother and father were both in the Army.  They lived all over the place.  The one she remembers was in Alaska.  Anchorage I think.  She said they lived on the second floor and the first floor was all open.  She remembers all the kids would ride their bikes on he first floor.

Rick

Fortunately the Marx barracks are still being re-issued.  One of the few Marx building molds that K-Line didn't get.  Price is around $15 which isn't too bad.  Splicing two together would make a nice building but as it has been pointed out the Marx barracks is not O scale. 

The Marx barracks remind me of the Plasticville buildings between S and O scale so they work with S and O-27 in the foreground and with full O scale in the background.

A few references for scratch building or kit bashing.

PDF  “World War 2 Military Buildings – A Brief History of the Architecture and Planning of Cantonments and Training Locations in The United States”

The Library of Congress has many old photos and images of the original building plans for Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.  Many of the old "temporary buildings" still stand and have been remodeled and updated a number of times.

A Google Advanced Search using:

(All These Words) McCoy Wisconsin Buildings

(The Exact Word or Phrase) "Library of Congress"

Two of the results returned by the above search:

First result

Second result

Another result was for historicmapworks.com which appears to have the same images as available from the LOC.  You can download their images for $10 -$20 each.  I don't know if they have done anything to make them clearer than what you can download or "save as" from the LOC website.

Larry

Spent many summers at Camp McCoy.   We had coal fired furnaces.

Jim,

I was just there last week and the place hasn't changed much...

Larry Sr,

I believe someone you know will remember this also-Ft Rucker had the old barracks up until about 2000.  Where the WOCS school used to be was torn down around then. However, many of the foundations were left intact.  Not sure if they're still there or not. I vividly remember getting my @-- kicked by a TAC Officer next to one! 

This thread really brought back the memories!

I lived in the old North Fort barracks at Fort Lewis in the summer of 1963 at ROTC summer camp.  They were a light yellow tan color then and there were several two story barracks with a single story admin building and a single story "day room" in each company area.

If memory serves (and it often doesn't at my age) the latrine was on the end opposite the ladder and shared the end of the building with an ancient coal-fired heating furnace and boiler.

The mark units are close enough for my purposes and will also serve as a company barracks that I had on Okinawa in 1967-1968, although those were concrete.

A friend who I served with and took Basic Training with at Ft Knox in 64, took these in 8MM. He found the film in his parents basement last year, and since I'm in several scenes, he sent me copies over his phone. It shows the barracks. Co. D-12-3 and the Barracks are long gone. We were near Gold Vault Bullion Ave. and could look down and see the Gold Vault.