Flockburgh Folly

On our model railway layout Flockburgh there is a hill. And at the top of the hill there is a scruffy patch of grass (OK, scatter). It's just green with no real texture. Not pretty but at the time I just needed to cover up the plasterwork making up the cliff.

Looking at the layout, we'd always felt that there should be a monument or something overlooking the station from here. Trouble is I never got around to designing and making one. It's never quite seemed important enough. Besides, designing a monument is a lot harder than it looks. Then at a trip to my local model shop I struck lucky.

Hornby produce a range of "Scaledale" resin buildings. They are rather nicer than they have any business being - in fact I bet a lot of modellers miss out on the fun of scratchbuilding structures because there is no need (not true but that's how it will be perceived) when you can just buy them and pop them on the layout. In this range is a nice little folly. I liked the look and poking around the model with a ruler showed it to be rather better as a 3mm scale effort than the intended 4mm. At the smaller scale the doors are a more castley 7ft for example.

Obviously I couldn't use it as supplied, pride meant I had to fiddle with it. In the end this was a coat of grey paint, to match the local stone, and some light weathering. Then I carved a hole in the cliff top and fitted a balsawood stump to retain the model - it has to be removable for transport. To bed the building in some scenic net covered with scatter and nylon grass was built up using PVA and hairspray. This is flexible to survive the tower being removed.

The result looks nice to me. By the time you read this, all being well, I'll have had the opinions of several visitors to the Uckfield Exhibition.