Wadborough LMS Platelayers hut

I like this hut. I like it so much I've built it in 3 different scales over the years - 3,7 and 16mm to the foot. You are looking at the middle of of these. The original drawing is from the Ericplans book published by Peco back in 1971. Years ago I borrowed a copy from the model railway club library and photocopied everything interesting in case it would come in useful one day. Eventually I obtained my own copy but as it's long out of print (I think), it's not going anywhere near the workbench.

I built the model years ago with no particular use in mind for it. It lives in a box now and comes out for appearances on demo stands when I talk about card building construction. The only snag is that part of it is a mystery to me.

The basics are simple enough - the carcase is built from Daler board. It's covered in Howard Scenics embossed card which I carefully cut so it could wrap around the corners. The results are nice although I've not been converted from plasticard wall surfaces. The roof tiles are writing paper cut into strips. Even the lead flashing is paper. The window and door are more cardboard.

The big mystery is the painting - those bricks have come up very well and feature lovely clean mortar. My guess is that I dry-brushed the colours using Humbrol and then picked out individual bricks but I really can't remember. How I kept the gaps between bricks as paint free as they are is amazing, normally I'm hopeless with this and have to try and run thin paint into them but that's not an option with card which will soak the liquid up too quickly. Besides, that looks like unpainted card colour to me.

Perhaps this is why the blog is a good idea - I can just look back and remind myself. Everyone with a failing memory should have one !