stegotron

Congratulations Ben, a worthy winner, especially having seen the build thread. It was a fun challenge and having seen what has been created this time, I'm looking forward to the next one.

Thanks @Wrenn, thanks for the comments and glad you liked it.

Thanks @Keith Addenbrooke, I appreciate the comments. It's been a fun build and hopefully will spur me on to my next target which is a Billy bookshelf layout. I'll keep an eye out for the entry info in a couple of days.

So firstly, hi, I'm new round here, though I have been lurking since last April, looking for ideas and from reading BRM magazine. I wasn't sure how I enter my cakebox into the challenge though I had had this planned for some time (see 300 words below) and it was only after the announcement for this year that I used it as a reason to get cracking with it. So with that I'm looking more for tips and ideas than first prizes, I'll be honest. Also, I only have one photo of the build as I kept doing stuff, forgot to photograph it and then had to put it all away before my little lad got his hands on it, so no long thread on how it came to be. But anyhow, here is my slice (cakebox, slice, get it???) of Cumbrian tranquility, waiting for a train to steam into view. Hope you like it and details below. With the start of the first lockdown I got my train set out of the loft and got it running again. Having never got past blu tacking my track to a board, I started looking at scenery, layouts and everything else that had changed since I first got my model train in the early 90s. Discovering previous cakebox challenges, I decided to use it as a basis for learning techniques to create scenery and looked close to home for inspiration. Cumbria once had a vast network of railways that served many industries, including mines, quarries, and the vast iron and steel industry on the West Coast. With the decline of all these industries, eventually the railways dwindled to what is there today. My cakebox is a "what if things had continued as they were", showing the end of a quarry train, waiting for an engine to couple up. The railwayman is stood outside his hut (with stove-fire flicker), having a tea and chatting with a mid-century (Modelu) Phil Parker who has driven down to get some layout ideas. My 2 pieces of rubbish started with some badly warped foam board, levelled with foam at the corners, and the road was made with a strip of cereal packet bent and glued over a strip of thick cardboard to create camber. The hills were built up with scraps of foam board and scultamold, with the bushes being made from lichen from a local park covered in coarse and fine foam flock. The fire flicker in the Ratio hut is a recycled tealight wired off a 5v USB cable. The rest of the diorama is static grass, weathered ballast and paint where needed. For my first try, I'm very happy with the result. Now for something bigger.