Telč Castle and Church

[AlanG]

Originally Posted by Mike Stamper

I never did make the model. Although have made quite a few of the Betexa kits ( including Prague Castle). Prague was, I think the first of their kits to be printed matt, so all the buildings I have are gloss.

Shame, I was hoping for some tips My copy of Telč is a very good matt finish - presumably a recent reprint.

10 years ago I was still using film, so the pictures below are scans of photos.

Nice all the same. The castle is hiding in the corner of the postcard aerial view - it shows how huge a model of the complete town centre would be. The interior of the church is quite remarkable. I'm going to pass on detailing the inside, though

Now, back to the model. We progress northwards with a big slab of a building.



Most of the doors and windows are just flat printed, but a few are (optionally) recessed. These include the three windows on each side of the tower on the left of these pictures, and the three arch-topped windows on the ground floor of the big building. I toyed with the idea of giving the remainder a little depth, but soon chickened out when I considered how many there were.

The right-hand end is still very floppy, as we are missing a lot of structure, but there is already a good deal of rigidity in the mainly complete left part.

Now for another of those nice fiddly bits! The next courtyard has an arcade at each end, with an open gallery above. Here is the first section of one of these.

[AlanG]

The model is divided into three sections - A, the "English garden" and surrounding low ranges, B, the northern range of the main castle, and C, er... everything else. Parts A and B are now done, but there is still well over half the model to go. The instructions recommend building part C separately and joining things up at the end, but I am very dubious about getting the inner courtyards accurate and secure with the very limited access available. I shall therefore continue to assemble as I go, and hope that this does not prove to be a big mistake as time goes on.

So we move to the chapel, with deeply inset windows, together with one wall of one of the arcades mentioned in my last post. This completes the enclosure of the large garden.

[AlanG]

Now for the central courtyard. First comes the ground level and the second half of the eastern arcade. Then the fun bits - steps and a ramp to a door in the arcade, pillars "supporting" the arcade, and a small portico and balcony. The pillars under the right-hand half of the arcade are not yet glued behind the foot of the arches, to allow the gallery floor to take up its correct position against the side wall. All of this would have been very awkward without access from the open side of the court.



Next the other sides of the courtyard are enclosed, and the beginnings of the western arcade and gallery formed.



The remainder of the main building goes in place, with two internal passageways.



The shorter of the two passageways turned out to be too long to fit between the sides of the building, probably owing to a failure of mine, so I cut it in half and telescoped one half into the other. You can see the overlap easily in this photograph, but it will be quite invisible once buried inside the completed building.

[Kevin WS]

Well done.

This is actually a very complicated model judging by your photographs - far more complicated then the finished item indicates!

[AlanG]

Originally Posted by Kevin WS

Well done.

This is actually a very complicated model judging by your photographs - far more complicated then the finished item indicates!

Thank you, Kevin. Yes, it has turned out to be a lot more interesting (and at times "interesting") than I was expecting from the rather bland cover photos. Certainly enough to keep the interest going.

The roof is on the main building. This was tricky, with multiple tabs needing to be coaxed into place. Just gluing one or two at a time took quite a while, working from the apse of the chapel westward, but was reasonably successful. I didn't get round to taking photos as I worked, so here is the final result.



Then the western gallery could be finished,



and the eastern.



The buttresses on the chapel are just doubled-up card, and look rather naff. I think I may feel impelled to strip them off and replace them with properly-shaped ones, but not quite yet.

[AlanG]

Another day, another courtyard... This is approached by a large passageway through the main building, and houses what look like stables and coach houses (the low right-hand building).



Another low range of buildings closes off the western end.



Here we have another strange aberration. The part for the small lean-to in the middle of the picture has a base which is again drawn the wrong way round. The left end of the shed is square, and the right end angled, but when folded up the base goes the other way.



It is not hard to fix things up, but again it is surprising that, in a model which generally fits together so well, such a mistake was not spotted and corrected.

[AlanG]

We are nearly at the end of the castle structure. The final section of wall ends in a part-circular, part-polygonal tower. For this I succumbed and put in extra formers to maintain the correct shape.



Now another complex roof to fit, once more a little at a time.



One nice thing about this kit is that where a tab is going to be difficult to fit precisely, it is carefully coloured very similarly to the adjacent piece, so any misalignments scarcely show. An example of this is the gully between the square tower roof and the main roof in this last assembly.

[AlanG]

The last thing on this end of the castle for now is the small strip of surrounding terrain which helps define the plan shape of the outer walls,



and eleven small butresses. These are properly shaped, unlike those on the chapel. I definitely think I am going to have to do something about the chapel buttresses...

[AlanG]

... Some hours later



I THINK it is an improvement. Unfortunately I had to cut away the original buttresses, and that made a bit of a mess. I hope people don't look too closely.

Looking ahead, I can see I'll have to do the same job with the buttresses on the church, but at least I am forewarned, so it should go rather more smoothly.

[elliott]

I'll have to admit it does look much better with the new buttresses. This is an enjoyable thread. Keep up the good work.