I started the scenery by looking for a decent Cotswold countryside panorama photo on the internet. Fortunately I found a suitable image and was able to take this and a further Cotswoldian village picture, put them into some photo software and develop the background image I was looking for. The village was blended in to appear behind the station building as with my limited space I would be unable to fit in suitable village buildings in 3D. A few further touch ups to remove the odd 21st century person and tractor, and I was ready to go. The image was resized to fit on 5 A4 pages with very minimal overlap adn then printed intentionally on a low gsm paper. This gave a soft focus feel to the image so that the focus of the layout was the track area. Similarly I then gave the interior walls of the layout a coat of a sky blue, and then cut the images across the horizon/tree line. Although the sky was more realistic I wanted to give the feel of a painted background, again to soften the focus to the front of the layout. This was mounted with a simple coat of Pritt stick and the edges rolled to remove the join as best as possible, (For the future a banner print may give a better finish but this can be a little expensive). 

The bulk of the land mass was completed using blocks of polystyrene, coated with a generous layer of filler smoothed over. In the area of the castle ruins this was intentionally tiered in a "man made" way, to show the Motte and Bailey structure of the old castle. The cutting into the the tunnel was developed and shaped to give a photo oppotunity with the castle in the background. The whole layout was then give a coat of a light green and brown emulsion. The brown was a tone from Dulux called "Muddy Puddle" which gives a lovely tone for uncoated country roads. On top of this, layers of dark earth, fine dark green mixed greens and yellows and rough grass scatter were added. I have limited my pallet on this layout, as I feel n-gauge is best for giving an impression of a scene as opposed to the hyper reality of larger scales. Trees, bushes and hedgerows have been added using some left overs in my scenics box, however over time I would like to improve the trees to more realistic styles.

Buildings

I have relied heavily on Peco kits for my station area buildings, using the Goods Shed, Engine Shed and Station building. I have also used the Peco cattle dock however I have halved this in size as I have designed the layout to handle a single livestock wagon at a time. This is the first time I have ever built plastic kits for a model railway as my previous layout used cardboard only. I have found them very straight forward to construct and again have kept my pallet small for the building trimmings to soften them into the environment, I do plan to add a small number of extra details in the future and I have given some interior details to the Goods shed (pallets/sacks etc). (Daisy also stands happily in the cattle dock!). I have also used the Peco tunnel and bridge fronts which were coated in 3 different colours, a predominant colour and then 2 tones to pick out the odd brick. They were then coated in black which was heavily removed before wet to pick out the brick details.

The Castle is a mix of 2 of the Hormby Liddle End Castle Ruins sets and Normoyle Folley, which I have been very impressed with. A little climbing plant life has been added to blend them into the rough overgrown grass.

The coal staithes and weighbridge in the yard are from the excellent Scalescenes.com range. These were again printed on a low gsm paper but this time on colour laser as opposed to inkjet to give some solidity to the details. I found this kit wonderfully easy to follow and, with only a discarded pizza box to add rigidity, the kit came together with ease. I plan to use this site in the future and would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a cheap and simple kit that is easily constructed but gives a good quality finish.

Railway furniture

I have recently added 2 lower quadrant starter signals and some smaller shunting signals to the layout. These are S&D mouldings pre painted and are not operational. I did consider using the Ratio kits and making them operational however, I was impresed by the quality of the SD models and I am unsure I currently have the skill to effectively build the Ratio kits. I purposely purchased signals so that platform 2 was set for departure with all the other signals "on". Platform 2 is where most of my departures are from and although this means that some of the time the signals are incorrect, this does mean that for the enjoyable moment of the next train pulling away everything is right. I also have added a loading gauge from SD mouldings on the goods loop.