Wooden signal box

Time for a model that is special to me. As a youthful modeller, the articles I really enjoyed reading were those written by Alan Downes. His buildings really seemed to capture the look and feel of the real thing without all the faffing around with fiddly detail. While the rest of that edition of Railway Modeller might well have long since headed for the bin, the chances are I could dig out this bit from my box files.

Which is why when Chris Neverd asked me if I wanted a 7mm scale signal box made by Alan, I couldn't really turn it down. OK, there's none of his favourite Pyruma fire cement - the stone for all his stone walls - I'm happy to bag a bit of the mans work.

The box is mostly plasticard. It's not a model of any specific location, but then that was never the Downes style, more generic GWR structure. Attractive but wrong enough to annoy purists. That's probably why I like it.

There's work to do of course, but that makes it more interesting for me. Very few modellers produce anything that I wouldn't want to tinker with to add my own stamp, although a Guy R Williams loco would be left well alone!