Hello everyone,

After a year and a bit of lurking on the old forum and the odd comment on other RMwebbers' work, I thought it was about time I should take the plunge and present some of my own modelling.

My main layout is loft-bound and has been an ongoing project for the last 2 years with very slow progress. As the summer months invariably mean the loft becomes far too hot for modelling activities, I was looking for another way to satisfy my urge to glue bits of cardboard together and pretend I'm any good at woodwork. The opportunity arose earlier this year when a close friend of mine passed his exams to become a driver for Southern. I decided to create a small diorama he could put on his shelf representing a very small part of the Southern network. As the only r-t-r model available in the new Southern railway livery is the Modelzone/Bachy 171, that was duly bought and so I began putting together a small slice of miniature life.

The model is very much a freelance job, the idea being that it should look like it could be somewhere on the Uckfield branch. Apart from being a present for a friend, the other motive was to practice using some of the many landscaping and detailing products I had amassed, but because of the excruciatingly slow progress on my loft layout, hadn't been able to use yet. This way I could practice and see how things go before committing to the layout proper.

So, first up, a potted history of how "Nutbrook" came to be...with photos to illustrate its progress. Please forgive some of the bad photography - the photos are taken on a mobile phone, albeit a fairly good 5 megapixel one, but I'm no Chris Nevard!

I started with a piece of hardboard - I found it in the loft - god knows where it was from, or what its intended purpose was, but for me, it was a perfect starting point. I just plonked a piece of flexitrack (Peco code 100, nothing special) on top and liked where it landed.

The track was glued down with neat PVA painted on the board with a brush. Once the track was down I sprinkled a first layer of medium woodland scenics buff ballast over the glue and allowed it to set. I have to say that I'm a "does it look right? Yes? Then I don't really care if it's out of scale" modeller. The medium grains look about the right size for ballast. The fine grains are probably more accurate, but I like to be able to see the individual stones and I think they look good. The track (rails and sleepers) was also painted with Railmatch Sleeper Grime.

Next, I formed the platforms. For this I used the excellent ScaleScenes platform kit. I followed the instructions, running a coach along the track with a pencil held in the centre. The brick edging was then glued in place, a couple of millimetres behind the line, then card formers were glued in place behind the edging. The platform top was cut from a piece of 3-ply card. I got this from where I work - it's cue card, what was used to show TV presenters their lines before tele-prompters were invented - otherwise known as "Idiot board" in the business. Because it's 3 ply, it is quite solid and doesn't warp very easily. It's also approx 2mm thick - ideal for the ScaleScenes structures. The card was cut to the same length as the diorama. This allowed me to form not only the platform ramp, but also the approach road which slopes down at the back. This leads on to a road and a level crossing which will act as the scenic break at the end nearest the camera. A road over bridge will be the break at the far end.

Speaking of which...here's the view a couple of weeks later, after a fair number of evenings' work. After laying the main track and the platforms, I remembered the last time I took a trip down the Uckfield branch and seeing the large amounts of sleepers still in place where the line had been singled. I decided this was a feature I wanted to try and emulate. I had plenty of offcuts of flexitrack which could be utilised. Here, you can see where I've ballasted both tracks. Also seen is the new bridge which will form the scenic break, together with a plain block of polystyrene which will eventually become part of a disused platform.

A look at the reverse side of the bridge shows its construction. It's actually a kit-bashed ScaleScenes tunnel mouth. I really do like using these kits - as a relative newcomer to the hobby I find them easy to use and they yield a pretty decent result. (I'm in no way affiliated to them, just a happy customer, by the way). Their flexibility is the thing I like most. At first, I was going to make a tunnel mouth, but then thought it was a little passe...and possibly a bit too heavy handed in such a small scene. So the idea struck me to create a bridge from the kit instead. All it took was to change the shape of the "mouth", widening it to the buttresses, and add a road deck to the top. It's only half a bridge, being the end of the scene, but there's nothing to stop anyone from making it into a fully fledged brick built bridge by doubling up on the other side.

My friend and I are both keen cyclists, as well as being keen railway enthusiasts, so I couldn't help but model a representation of us on one of our rides through the countryside! (I'm the one in the grey, by the way). The bikes started life as Hornby Skaledale ones. They're not ideal, as they represent rather old fashioned "sit-up-and-beg"s, rather than our nice modern tourers, but they were all I could find at short notice. They're not cheap, so it was with a bit of trepidation that I set about chopping off the baskets from the front handle bars and painting them roughly the correct shade of blue. The figures are of unknown origin, found in a box of bits from my previous foray into modelling as a teenager. I repainted them, carefully slicing off the painted layer on the lower legs to reveal the "flesh" and turn the trousers into shorts. It must be a cold day because we've both got our long sleeve cycling tops on!

Construction tended to go in fits and starts, and 1 month after the previous photos were taken, not a lot had happened. I had completed a few details though, which can be seen in this picture. The fencing and signs have been a source of much grievance - I just can't seem to be able to get my head around the colour of the Southern station livery. So far the fences have had four coats of paint! This colour is probably the closest I got, but unfortunately, it's not the colour the fences are today!?

The diorama was presented to my friend on the weekend after he found out he had qualified as a train driver. It wasn't ready, but I thought I'd present it to him anyway. He was thrilled to bits, I'm glad to say, and thankfully he thought it would go on the shelf I had in mind for it too. Unfortunately, when he headed home and took some measurements (I hadn't been able to do it surreptitiously!) he found that it was too long! So, some minor surgery was in order. I was able to shorten the platform by about 7cm, but I still needed to find another 6cm, so unfortunately the level crossing had to go at the other end. All that remains is the path next to the road and the crossing keeper's hut.

The station signs have been reproduced from photos of the signs at my local station. Although I now have Adobe Photoshop Elements, at the time I relied on GIMP - the free photo editing tool (which I can recommend actually. It's surprisingly intuitive). I stretched the photo out so that the sign was square on, then cropped the image. I scaled the images down in Word then printed them out on my inkjet printer. After mounting them on 1mm card and fixing them to suitably coloured 1mm plastic strip, I'm actually quite chuffed with how they've come out.

One of the signs - the running in board, on which Southern put their logo - in place on the diorama. Close up photography is cruel - it looked perfectly straight when I glued it in place! A spot of super glue on the back to hold the sign up against the fence properly solved the problem.

Many of you will recognise the station building and the shelter as the ScaleScenes kit from an early edition of Hornby Magazine. It was originally intended for my loft layout, but I thought it was the perfect size for this one. I'm going to have to find something else for the loft now! Other details I've added are posters and a Passenger Information screen (or is that Customer Information screen? I can never remember whether I'm a customer or a passenger when I take the train now!) The posters were taken from Southern's website and scaled down in Word again. The information unit was scratch built. I used a photo of the real thing - again at my local station - and manipulated it in a similar way to the signs, but this time adding tabs the same colour as the unit to the top, sides and bottom, to create a template. A card former was cut to the correct size of the screen then 2 of the templates were wrapped and glued around. The tabs formed the sides, top and bottom of the unit. Unfortunately,my printer isn't good enough for the screens to be legible, but they do say that the first train is for Uckfield and the second is for London Bridge (and it's delayed, of course!). I also made a London Connections map, which I've placed in the waiting shelter.

At this point, work stopped on the diorama, as work and the summer weather got in the way. It wasn't until recently that I got going again and it's now nearly finished. I'll upload some pics of how it looks now very soon, but in the mean time, I'd love to know what you all think. Any comments and constructive criticism gratefully received.

Mike