WWG Police Station part 1

Okay, folks, here it is - my largest ever card building and without doubt, the most eagerly awaited. It is, of course my World Works Games 28mm scale Mayhem City Police Station.

Here it is in all its glory. Those of you who can remember my work in progress shot that I showed last year will notice a few changes, most notably the first floor parapet, two air-conditioning units, a communications dish and tower and a set of ladders to the helipad. There is one external prop that I have deliberately omitted and that is the searchlight. I honestly couldn't see any need for adding one (or more). If ever I do need one or more, I'll add them as non-permanent features.

Three of those four new items came from the Mayhem Police set. The ladders, however,  came from the original Mayhem Armoury set. The Mayhem Police set does come with a rooftop access structure for the helipad, but to be honest, I thought it looked naff and so went with the external ladder option instead.

The set comes with a wide assortment of signs to put above the entryway but I've gone for the most basic of them all, which is the "Mayhem City Police" sign. This is generic enough for me and doesn't tie the building to a specific location as some of the other signs do. Almost everything you see in these photos has been stuck onto thick mounting card. The parapet was glued to foamboard and the upper floors/roofs are reinforced with foamboard. This allows them to fit in place. All doors, the front entrance circular columns and the communications dish have been reinforced with thin card.

The building sits on a base that measures 24" by 15". The ground floor has a footprint that measures 21" by 12". The first floor (sorry American viewers, I'm going with the English convention where the first floor comes above the ground floor) has a footprint of 15" by 12" and the second floor measures 9" by 6". Each floor is 3" tall. Overall height, if you measure to the top of the communications tower is 12"

The rear of the building shows that vandals have been busy daubing graffiti on one of the walls. In my opinion, that lends the place an air of realism. I decided to add a footpath along the back of the building, but grass verges to the front and sides, thus ensuring that the station will not be abutted by another building.

One of the things that I am most proud of this building is the first floor parapet, which is a very clever piece of design. Because of my external ladder to the helipad and the access to the first floor roof I knew that I wanted to fit a parapet to the first floor roof. From a Health and Safety point of view, I'm sure it would be a legal requirement. The only problem was that the set didn't come with a parapet. Or rather it didn't come with one per se. What it did have was a sheet of roof edgings, which, if turned through ninety degrees, made for a perfect parapet. This, my friends, is called lateral thinking, or thinking outside the box. They are glued onto strips of foamboard and they make a perfect parapet.

Whenever I do my building reviews I always start from the ground floor and work my way up. This time, however, I'm going to work my way down from the top floor. Given that the ground floor is the largest of the three floors, that will be covered in part two of my review. The photo above shows an overhead view of the second floor interior, consisting of three rooms. To the left is the landing leading to the stairs down to the first floor and showing the door that leads outside to the first floor roof. The small room is the access corridor to the evidence room. Here, anyone who wishes to enter the evidence room, must sign in. The largest room is the evidence room.

The evidence collected by detectives is bagged and tagged and stored in here on one of eight shelf units. These shelf units came from the Ebbles Ambient Elements Storeroom and Workshop sets. Likewise for the two cardboard boxes I've added atop the shelves. Unless I mention otherwise, all furniture items come from the WWG Mayhem Police set. The low wall at the top of the staircase is the same design as my parapet, only not as wide. The wall was stuck to a piece of mounting card rather than foamboard.

The desk is actually made up of two small Ebbles desks from his Barracks set, glued together to make one long desk. The laptop computer is also from one of the Ebbles sets. The chair and telephone unit are from the Mayhem Police set. The filing cabinet in the corner is from the Mayhem Industrial set. Note that the door to the evidence room is kept locked at all times, but like all of my doors, it will open and close.

Moving down a floor, this photo above shows an overhead view of the first floor of the building and now things really start to get interesting. Starting at the top left hand corner and moving clockwise we have a detective's office, a small office, the CCTV monitor room, the Captain's office, the Captain's toilet and washroom, the squad room, the stairwell leading to the ground floor and the second floor, and finally, the locker room and armoury.

I'll begin my tour of the first floor with a look at the Captain's Office, a room I am very proud of. It is jam-packed with stuff, especially on the walls. The Captain sits behind an L-shaped desk, upon which are his computer keyboard, monitor and lots of papers. His computer sits in the corner of the room on top of a filing cabinet. On the wall behind him is a classical landscape painting, showing he is a man of taste.

On the wall in between the two windows is a large map of Mayhem City.On the wall with the exit/entrance door is a small bookshelf, a wall-mounted flat-screen TV (this came from the Mayhem Mega Mall set), a photo of his father hangs above two of his numerous certificates and sitting above the door, a Mayhem Police shield.

A huge bookcase (from the original Shellendrak Manor set) dominates the far wall, next to his own personal washroom and toilet. Actually, you can see what's inside the washroom far better from the overhead view that I posted above. The room is 6" square, with the washroom occupying a 2" by 2" corner.

Next door to the Captain's Office is the Close Circuit Television (CCTV) monitor room. This is where police operatives monitor and analyse footage from lots of CCTV cameras dotted around Mayhem City. It is not part of the WWG Mayhem Police set, but is something that I have designed for my police station.

The long desk, the two chairs and the two phone units are part of the Mayhem Police set. For the wall of TV screens I used a piece of black mounting card cut to the length of the room and stuck on 12 images of WWG scenery taken from their website and shrunk to fit, to represent various Mayhem City locations. Obviously, I chose images that had no writing on them. The result looks very effective and just shows what you can do with a bit of imagination.

This photo above shows the CCTV Monitor room and two offices used by some of the station's detectives, one small and one large. You can also see part of the L-shaped corridor that connects all the rooms on this floor.

In the small office, you can see a desk, with an Ebbles laptop computer on it, and two chairs. From left to right in the large office are a small filing cabinet, upon which sits a telephone unit; a computer stack, a wall-mounted bookcase, and in the corner, a larger filing cabinet.

In this photo above, you can see the desk in the large office has a computer keyboard and monitor on it. This room measures 6" by 3" whilst the small office and the CCTV monitor room are 3" square.

The rest of the small office is taken up by a small filing cabinet and a blackboard mounted on the wall. Next to the window in the large office is a photocopier machine,

Moving on, we come to the locker room and armoury. The two lockers shown above, one open and one closed, contain body armour, helmets and equipment for this station's SWAT team.

 

The eight lockers shown here are those used by the street cops. I'd have liked to have added more of both types of locker but I didn't have the space to.

Along the short wall at the far end of the room is the gun cabinet. This is kept locked electronically. It contains pump-action shotguns, sniper rifles and sub-machine guns.

 

Finally, on this floor, is the squad room, the largest of all the rooms in this building. It measures 9" by 6". This is where the street patrol cops receive their briefings and where they type in their reports. 

There is a lot going on in here. Against the long wall at the top of this photo are a long rack of filing cabinets (taken from the Mayhem Industrial set). A water cooler sits on top of the cabinets, off to the right, Above the cabinets is a long wall-mounted bookcase. Towards the right top corner is a photocopier machine and a coffee vending machine. Cops do like their coffee!

At the top of this photo you can see the desk and chair used by the duty-sergeant to give out the daily briefings and announcements. "Let's be careful out there!" At the top left corner of the photo is a large board showing a map of Mayhem City, identical to the one seen in the Captain's Office.

The room is dominated by four double desks, with seats and Ebbles laptop computers for eight cops. A pair of room dividers have been placed between each pair of desks.

I thought I'd leave you with a sneak preview of the ground floor interior. I'm sure you can identify many of the rooms yourself from this overhead photo, but I'll give you a much more detailed review in my next post in a few days time.