Back in June 2013 Wiggoforgold very kindly posted some pictures he had of Buckden in 1978 (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1362/entry-11926-buckden-station-1978/) showing the signal box and weighbridge hut/yard office. It spurred me on to do the signal box, and confirmed the colours, but, although I made a basic start on it, I never finished the yard office. SWMBO was on a train to Newcastle all day today (Lucky thing!) so I had time to get back to it. The roof was tricky (and actually I had a failed attempt at it last night) but I think it's about right. A look at the prototype picture suggests they didn't really know how to finish it off either! Fiddly chimneys seem to have been the vogue for Buckden so I got to make another one of those too!

I had bought the Wills(?) weighbridge kit a while ago, so dug that out and painted both. The weighbridge is Tamiya NATO black acrylic (46444 uses it a lot - I wanted to know what the fuss was about - it IS very nice to work with), drybrushed with Humbrol MET 53 Gunmetal and then with DCC concepts weathering powders apllied. For the hut I used a similar mix of acrylics as I did when painting the station building (raw and burnt umber, yellow ocre, titanium white, ivory black and sap green). Photo below - it's not in it's final position, but it's all a bit brown over there!

I also got hold of the new Wills SS91 ground frame kit so put that together and painted simlarly but with Tamiya Titanium Silver for the handles. Again probably not in it's final place, and I need to sort the point rodding but photo:

I'm not entirely sure where it should be. I think it's controlling the entrance to the goods yard (http://www.signalbox.org/diagrams.php?id=865) and facing point lock (in which case I realise as I write this that I've painted on of the handles the wrong colour), and then the siding is on a point lever, in which case it should probably be closer to that yar entry point. Why that was done, given that the frame had to be unlocked in the box and they could have just had the box control the point I do not know....

Strangely the impetus for getting the ground frame in (apart from the fact it's only just been released!) was to finish the point rodding so I can start to lay down grass with my new static grass machine from FMR which arrived this week.

FMR / finescalemodelworld.co.uk gave EXCELLENT customer service incidentally, as I'd managed to make an order without including any of my details apart from my name. Not to be beaten they did some excellent googling and called my office number at work!

There's a nice, consistent, muted green feel to the buildings, and it's starting to tie things together nicely...apart from the signal box, which is now looking a bit bright...might be time for a repaint.

Marcus.