brylonscamel

FARM

STATION GARAGE & LEVEL CROSSING

STATION BUILDINGS

HARBOUR - starting with the quayside, these photos show how each section looks after the '12 days of Christmas' challenge!

The same photo of the baseboards,annotated to indicate the site of each new scene.

Here's a photo as reminder of where I was at in the summer of 2019 .. All the buildings were ripped off the baseboards, large sections of track removed or replaced.

This thread started 4 years ago in the summer of 2019, after persuading my father to completely refresh our joint layout, 'Braeside'. "Let's make it more 'Scottish" I said. "More obviously tied to Aberdeenshire and less crowded. I'll scratch-build everything and replace Metcalfe buildings with accurate local structures." "How about a whisky distillery, a granite station with turrets like the one at Aboyne, a coaling stage based on a real Caledonian example at Ferryhill?" It was supposed to take me a year to complete. Life threw balls at us, mostly curved ones. The pandemic tipped the world on it's head and mum died in the middle of it all. The project was far bigger than I realised and my skills were constantly tested. Everything took longer to make than I thought. A month could vanish, just researching a building. I worried about how long it would take and the risk of letting Dad down. Dad remained patient and supportive. Every Christmas holiday was an opportunity to make a small leap forward. Even when Coronavirus wrecked travel plans, I made things from home. Christmas 2023 has seen us pass an important milestone. The layout eclipses the old Metcalfey version, with it's muddle of kit buildings, clumsy scenery and grumpy trackwork. PS I even overheard Dad talking to his sister on the phone, saying that he was no longer worried that he'd never live to see the completed layout!

THE ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE I took a 12 day break at Christmas to see Dad, do festive things and crack on with making good on my promise to revamp his layout. The phone was largely off, social apps stopped and forums neglected!

I recognise the character on the stepladder!

Hi Jim, We selected a suitable subject from tenement drawings that I found online. It seems that although there are very strong patterns in their design, few tenements are the same! I adapted the subject to include a bar on the ground-floor. Much of the stonework detail was inspired by this tenement and then weathered ... Cheers, Brian

Watching this with interest - I alsostruggled to find something!

That's marvellous and sounds like a common layout for shop signs of the time.

Mark - you're right - I've already been told to scram! They were especially unhappy when told that I was 'taking selfies and updating my socials ' PS you may recognise the miniature figure ...

I misjudged the the sign over the fire-station engine bay, so our resident signwriter was called in to make good the lettering ..

Pugh, Pugh, Barney, Mcgrew .. Finally, the tiny residents of the Isle of Sheppey get their local fire station. Scratch-built in my favourite sheet materials: Foamex Embossed styrene Oil-board. Custom components laser-cut or by hand - the old-fashioned way!

I'll leave that to my client David!

Thanks for the lovely feedback - you say the photo is not Scotland but I am intrigued to where it is as the double-lapped and purple-tinged slate look very Scottish.

After the usual 24 hours of mild anxiety, Royal Mail delivered it to the far north. David set about placing the tenements on a prepared set of pavement and sent this photo. David is clearly still inside the bar and the taxi is waiting for him to emerge!

The full building was moelled, including the tenement backs, in blonde sandstone ..

David's commission of a some Glasgow Tenements trundled along rather slowly over recent months. But my I made good on my promise, delivering a set of bespoke tenements to him this week. Here is the finished article, as it left the studio yesterday ..

There's abeen a bit of a rethink on the quayside at Braeside harbour. The newly built hotel - based on the Huntly Arms - has always been dragged from it's inland setting to provide some architectural interest on the harbourside. This meant some head-scratching and re-plonking of buidings. The fish dock has moved to allow the goods shed and the hotel to take up residence amongst the harbour tramway. Thre's a risk that I am keen to avoid - a congested scene amongst some fairly open scenic areas - but it does appeal to me and has a bustle that you can find on a small working harbour.

You could also incorporate: The elegant footbridge The cut-off cottage - a ferry inn that famously lost it's corner when the railway cut its route through the valley The local sawmill, tucked away in the woodland

Oh that's a very romantic spot for a model railway. It also caught my eye as it has a lovely sweeping curve alongside the river Dee

There is quite a lot of 'Aboyne' included in the station and harbourside scenes. Not least, the station building itself! I have just resurrected the harbour branch, the access to which, passes in front of the main building. The ballasting, retaining wall and groundwork should conceal the clunky Peco Code 100 trackwork - another legacy from Dad's original layout

a challenge I'm currently wrestling with! I've basically scattered Dad's layout with bits of GNoSR and Caledonian railway architecture, plus some Aberdeenshire vernacular. I held to a promise that my revamp kept the baseboards and roundy-roundy trackwork that Dad had established. Each scene on the layout has some pretty accurate reproductions of buildings but tied together in the manner of a TV drama. I live in a city which hosted all the locations for 'Casualty'. A fun part of watching any episode was to work out where you were as they jumped from scene to scene on roads that had no connection in reality!