Buildings & Scenery

All the buildings are scratch-built using plastic sheet. Individual buildings were designed at an early stage and built in parallel with the rest of the layout. Inspiration for some of them came from industrial buildings around the Gloucester Docks area, the Black Country Museum and various photographs of railway workshops or munitions factories. Others, particularly the works office, came from my own furtive imagination – fired by some delightful ‘shop’ style windows and doors from the ‘Grandt Line’ range (available from 7mm NGA Sales). I started the office first, using ‘Slater’s’ embossed brick sheet but found that the courses and joints were anything but square. This building is built to a very strange shape in an attempt to get all the mortar joints to line up. Each corner has been scribed or filed to carry the mortar joints around the corner. I think this greatly improves the look of the brick-work – it is barely noticeable – which I think is a good sign since we really only notice the things that don’t look right. The next building was the foundry, which was intended to be a much older structure so I decide to use embossed stone plastic sheet. I have always liked to look of the ‘Wills’ random stone and felt that it wouldn’t look too out of place. This is a lot thicker than the ‘Slater’s’ embossed sheet and presented a bit of a challenge when cutting out the doors and windows. As with all the buildings, I used ‘Grandt Line’ windows, joining two half-round sections together to make the round windows. In the rush to get everything presentable for the first exhibition I had to use Slater’s corrugated plastic sheet for some of the roofs as a temporary measure – needless to say, some of them are still there (but they will be replaced eventually). Whilst I wanted to create a scene of old factory buildings, I also wanted viewers to realise that it was a modern setting, so I included a modern style ‘square’ section corrugated locomotive shed. This was built up from a framework of Evergreen styrene ‘H’ girder section clad in Evergreen ‘box siding’ styrene sheet. I intend to include more detail in this shed, including lights, as and when time permits.

The main entrance to the museum is through the archway. the double fronted main office has been restored but the office on the far side of the arch is still being decorated.

Details

A factory/museum environment gives little scope for landscaping but I still found room for a little bit of undergrowth. Much of this came from Greenscene’s range of weeds and long grass. Short grass and weeds around the old tracks was represented using Noch electrostatic grass. Other bits and pieces came from a number of sources including Black Dog Mine, S&D, Greenscene and Duncan Models. Modern people proved to be a real problem, especially as I needed a lot of public visitors. Again a real mixture of sources have been used including Preiser, Phoenix, ABS/Wrightlines and Diamond Designs. The fork-lift truck is from a kit by Diamond Designs and the modern air compressor trailer is from a Mendip Models cast resin kit.  I have found it much harder to get modern detailing parts than the historical ones used on my earlier layout, they either aren’t made or are a well kept secret.

A reluctant fork-lift truck driver is told in no uncertain terms that the cement bags should be further along!

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