Over on my S&D blog, Colin (@BWsTrains) kindly asked if I had any close-up shots of the station building when the layout is in GWR mode. I promised to dig some out but was surprised at how few I had that offered a clear view of the model. I can't take any fresh ones of the building in-situ right now, because the layout is still in S&D mode, but I did grab a few snaps of the model on its own.

It's no great shakes as a piece of architectural modelling, but it does have enormous personal significance as the model is not only very old, but possibly my first attempt at scratchbuilding. Anyone familiar with the constituent railways of the GWR will hopefully recognise a William Clarke building, and in fact this one was constructed from the plans for Abbotsbury in one of the Paul Karau volumes on GWR branch termini.

The model was built in 1982 during a few days off from school, using offcuts of stout card surfaced with vac-formed stonework and paper. I've a vague recollection that it was made around the time of the Pope's visit to the UK, which (other than the Falklands War) was one of the main news items in the first half of that year. My grandfather worked for the Co-op and I think the card was donated by him from packaging and sales advertising. It would have been made using UHU or similar and plastic cement and other than some slight distortion here and there, has stood up to the ravages of time quite well.

There is nothing sophisticated about the interior and without reference to the plans, I would hazard that these internal walls don't correspond to the actual partitions. Other than painting the card, and adding some posters here and there, there is nothing by way of internal detailing. The lighting was added much later, along with plastic ducting to tidy it up to a small degree.

Turning the rear, it was never intended to be visible and I did the bare minimum on it:

As much as I like these William Clarke designs, I do like a station building with a proper door in it. With these, access to the platform was always from a gate at the side.

Over time, the stone facing began to buckle away from the card on the rear. To remedy this in the short term, I cut through the stone beneath the third window along, and

then glued it back down. If I were ever to present the model from this vantage, I'd need to do a lot of additional detailing and remedial work.

Turning back to the front:

The canopy had begun to buckle as well but I believe I succeeded in detaching and straightening it without the need to redo the glazed portion. The canopy on the original model had valencing cut from plastic sheet by hand, but when I came to repair it I used the Ratio stuff. Some etched supports were scrounged from a Scale Link sheet, but they're only representative. The chimneys are the third attempt, and still not quite right, but much better than the first two goes! I'm not sure about the ornamental stonework on the tops. In some photos and drawings, it looks as if there are four to a chimney, while other shots seem to show just a pair. It's sometimes a little difficult to interpret, so I'll leave as is for now.

Some of the crudity of the modelling is evident in this close-up of the toilet block it but looks somewhat better when in situ, especially with some platform clutter to distract the eye! More recently, when reworking the chimneys, I used some card, plastic and filler to attempt to better depict the ornamental stonework on the ends of the main building. The signage is entirely bogus and incorrect, and needs to be changed in due course, but again it's just one of those jobs that never seems to get done.

Anyway, for all its faults it is still very pleasing to me that the model still has a function on my layout. Here's an old shot of it as it ought to be seen, taken a good few years ago before the addition of the trailing connection to the goods yard, and before a GWR-pattern footbridge was added.

Hope this is of some interest and thanks for reading.