Way back in the late 1970s, I started building the Hornby Dunster Station Building kit for my EM gauge Abbotsbridge. Here it is in 1982 at an exhibition, showing clear signs of being unfinished.

I often used to comment to exhibition visitors on how the layout was far from finished, and the usual response was that it didn't look that way to them! About the only exception was the late Bob Symes, who was judging the layouts at the Astolat Club exhibition in Guildford, and remarked on how the layout ran beautifully, and will be very nice when it's finished!! The photo also demonstrates how Colonel Stephens loaned stock to the GWR when they didn't have enough to operate their lines!!!

Anyway, here was the same building a few days ago. Over the years, most of the doors and windows fell out, as well as other bits, and it still didn't have the canopy! Fortunately, I still had all the detached bits, the parts for the canopy, and the gutters for the road side, although I assume there should also be gutters and downpipes for the platform side that are missing.

The current plan wasn't necessarily to finish building it, just to attach all the loose bits and tidy it up. It will be used on the new Abbotsbridge, which will be built as a test track to start with, with just basic scenery, and a place to plonk down the buildings that would otherwise be hidden away in boxes. It could be a few more years before it's finally finished!

Here it is today, with nearly everything now attached. Not a brilliant job, but as I made progress with it I came to the conclusion that it's not such a good kit as I used to think it is, so just used it as something to practice on after years of not building anything.

I rather lost interest in doing a perfect job on it when I realised how accurate a model of the real thing it was. The kit must have been created by someone who had never seen the real thing, and had just had it described to them by a blind man who had visited it! How many differences can you spot?

I'd never intended for it to actually be a model of Dunster, and had made some changes to it, like covering it in embossed Plastikard, and mounting it on a balsa base. I also started converting one of the doorways on the road side to a window, but it's obviously been changed a lot from any prototype that actually existed.

I've only just got round to making the window for the former doorway! This is a really cruel view of how I butchered the door that matched the other one on the rear, to achieve it. As it doesn't match the others, presumably the original window needed replacing for some reason! I'll add the sill later. This photo shows up one of the glaring errors in the kit. I wonder how long real windows would last with lintels like that!!!

I'll do a bit more to it gradually, but I've got a bit carried away by my next project for now. I'm intending to have a big painting session on all the buildings for Abbotsbridge 2 (as it's referred at the moment) later on, so there's no rush to get it to that stage yet.