It feels good to have made some solid progress in the last fortnight, Paxton Road is at last coming into the final phase...

The MOD warehouse on the back of the layout needed to be completed before I could finish the ballasting or scenery on the front of the layout. However since building the plasticard shell in the very early days of the layout I've struggled for inspiration... these new photos are 2 years on from when it all started:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6868&hilit=paxton+road+warehouse&start=25#p177027

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6868&hilit=paxton+road+warehouse&start=25#p188387

So what have I been up to?

Well the original roof has warped so will need replacing but I've finished the shell. This started with a spray of grey primer. Once dry I added a wash of Humbrol 98 (Matt Chocolate) all over the external wall surfaces. I added a light cream (I can't recall the number) wash over the brickwork - and then once dry used some 98 to add darker staining. I painted the cameras white and the emergency door blue, and then used some Europe dust and Black smoke powder to very lightly weather the loading dock, and some Europe dust powder to stain down from the pipe supports (along with some matt white paint on the top of the pipe to represent bird droppings!).

I was struggling to decide how to do the signage and came across the free Scalescenes warehouse download which included all the signs I needed... an added bonus it also included perfect roller shutter doors so these were duly cut out and applied using spray mount.

Looking at the model it still didn't look right so I ended up cutting up the 'concrete apron' from the Scalescenes factory and using spray mount applied this to the loading dock.

Here we are with current progress... showing all this work to great effect.

I'm really pleased with the finish so far - nice and subtle but definitely work worn.

So what's next? Well a new roof and some steps down from the loading dock... and then decide how to do the concrete infill without ruining the finish on the building!