Since completing the most recent row of cottages for Callow Lane, I've been plodding on with the Townstreet goods shed kit. These are plaster-cast kits, where the plaster takes enamel paints beautifully to create realistic stone or brickwork effects.

I've always liked the idea of their kits, and built a water tower for Bleakhouse Road several years ago. The goods shed always felt 'LMS/Midland' to me, so I bought a kit at Ally Pally some years ago now, and started it fairly soon afterwards, but didn't get round to really tackling it until recently.

I have replaced one or two parts of the kit, where I felt that the plaster-casting process could be improved upon with alternative materials (although it must be admitted that this is one of their earlier kits and they have improved even on this over the years). In particular, I didn't like the plaster valencing over the road entrance, so that was replaced with a plasticard equivilent. The doors were also plaster, and whilst they aren't too bad, there was no hinge detail and in any case I thought that plasticard ones might look a bit better, so I made some replacements. The kit did not provide any doors to the roadway entrance, which I felt would have been the case, so I made some up and glued these inside, with just the edges showing from the outside, as they are modelled in the open position. This also meant that the interior 'runner' detail above these doors had to be modelled.

I also scratchbuilt a wooden loading platform (I did buy their interior detailing kit, but decided against using it, as the whole thing was already very heavy!), and provided some interior detailing, including a crane and various bits and pieces.

The main feature that has been replaced, however, was the main shed roof, where I wasn't happy with the overly-irregular roof slates, so I built a card replacement and glued Scalescenes slate strips on it (taken from their terraced cottages kit). I perhaps ought to have replaced the slates on the road entrance canopy, with the benefit of hindsight, but these aren't too bad and I have more weathering to do on these, to match them to the main roof (I haven't yet glued the main roof on).

Finally, I've fitted a couple of grain of wheat bulbs up in the roof to provide some interior illumination. Only one will be used at a time, the second one is a premanently wired-in spare.