Continuing the topic from British and French Merchants . . .
Here's a little on converting an older C in C tramp steamer into a half decent facsimile of Fort de Douaumont.
As so often happens I neglected to take a photo of the original model before I started hacking it up, but this is an identical model as yet unmodified. This was my starting point.
My first step was removing unwanted details: the gunwales fore and aft, details on the fo'c'sle and quarterdeck, the foreward hatches, and the after part of the superstructure amidships. I also filed the stern down considerably to give her a more pronounced counter stern.
Next I built up the fo'c'sle and quarterdeck with styrene.
Which I then trimmed, filled, and filed to shape.
Next I built an new superstructure and replaced details.
Finally with paint I think she came out all right.
I go into a little more detail on the blog, of course, in a post called Fort de Douaumont, but this is the gist of it. My thanks in particular to Photoship for the images kindly provided that aided me in my modeling. (Good little resource. They have some great art there.) Hope there's something here worth reading. It was a fun little project.