When I constructed some prototype winter huts for my City Point Model Railroad, I made the assumption that the soldiers used their shelter halves for sides and roofs of the shelters. I cut some paper to the scale size for a shelter half. Like the soldiers would have done, I used these for the roofs and ends of my models. One thing I found is that the shelter halves couldn’t completely cover the ends, so my huts ended up looking like this.

I was looking though some original Civil War images for my City Point Model Railroad and noticed that at least one original hut had the same problem.

Note how the hut on the right has a shelter half that doesn’t completely cover the end, just like on my model. Looking at this image more closely, it does appear that many of the more enterprising soldiers found enough construction materials to solve this issue. I need many more huts for my layout and will have to build a number of the improved versions.