In the latest (December) issue of British Railway Modelling you will find that after starting Owen's Bridge in the last issue, I finally get around to laying some track and cracking on with the scenery. Appropriately for the time of year, one of the main features is a field of poppies. Building these individually is normally the sort of thing that only the perfectionists at Pendon get involved with but we've found some plastic kits in HO scale from Busch that are filling our fields.
Despite being kits, this is still fiddly work but I think I found a few ways to make life a little easier. The results are nice and provide some useful colour to one end of the layout.
Since we need some rolling stock, I've built this from a variety of kits. There's an awful lot on offer here so I've stuck with Parkside and W^D models but each has it's own idiosyncrasies. One handy hint I can offer, when building resin models, use fresh superglue. Old stuff just leads to frustration - ask me how I know!
One of my more interesting projects recently is to scratchbuild a small parcels office. Those who follow the RTR scene closely will recognise it as being a copy of the Bachmann resin model. This probably seems an odd thing to do but I was interested in finding out how creating a building yourself stacks up against buying one from a shop.
I've deliberately picked the simplest building in the range - square and with limited detail. Obviously it would be daft to buy a building to copy - but this is the sort of test we can do in print, and the results are interesting.
On the DVD I'm giving you a tour of Owen's Bridge. Our cameraman took the opportunity to poke his lens in all sorts of places so if you don't get the chance to see the model at a show, at least you have an idea what it looks like when moving.
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