HOME | DD

Description
This is a "work in progress". The model is the Hornby/Trackside "Post Office", ie, a model of a typical rural English village post office/shop, designed to be built straight from kit and dropped into a model railway layout - the sprues come in four different colour plastics, white for the walls, black for small details, terracotta-red for the roof, et c. I have largely built the kit, but given the walls an overall wash in very paler grey to take the plasticky sheen off. Similarly, the roof tiles have been given a wash in black to dirty them up and accentuate the tile detail. I have elaborated the shopfront windows with extra detail and added glazing.

I have also dispensed with the rather basic kit base and built up a new setting for it, including what will be a walled garden at rear with large vehicle-accessible gateway to garage. In front, I have added typically English street paving (York flagstones) cut from card and designed from scratch. There is an alleyway to right which is one of my few failures - I used real lentils, as in split peas, to form cobblestones. These have started to rot and grow fungus, so I will strip the whole lot out, sanitise and begin again...

I hope to follow this through with additional photos and details as I finish the job - especially in the rear garden - and I have a rather nice classic British telephone box to add to the front street. (These always go with a Post Office in Britain - no exceptions.) If I can add a red pillar box for post, I will do!

Built for a wargames club for their summer exhibition display battle - this will be a representation of the German invasion of England in Summer 1940, a "what-if?" , fighting out a battle, of the kind that would have hapened for real had the Germans invaded in September-October 1940. Hence the German infantry figure (Matchbox/Revell) added for scale.

Description
This is a "work in progress". The model is the Hornby/Trackside "Post Office", ie, a model of a typical rural English village post office/shop, designed to be built straight from kit and dropped into a model railway layout - the sprues come in four different colour plastics, white for the walls, black for small details, terracotta-red for the roof, et c. I have largely built the kit, but given the walls an overall wash in very paler grey to take the plasticky sheen off. Similarly, the roof tiles have been given a wash in black to dirty them up and accentuate the tile detail. I have elaborated the shopfront windows with extra detail and added glazing.

I have also dispensed with the rather basic kit base and built up a new setting for it, including what will be a walled garden at rear with large vehicle-accessible gateway to garage. In front, I have added typically English street paving (York flagstones) cut from card and designed from scratch. There is an alleyway to right which is one of my few failures - I used real lentils, as in split peas, to form cobblestones. These have started to rot and grow fungus, so I will strip the whole lot out, sanitise and begin again...

I hope to follow this through with additional photos and details as I finish the job - especially in the rear garden - and I have a rather nice classic British telephone box to add to the front street. (These always go with a Post Office in Britain - no exceptions.) If I can add a red pillar box for post, I will do!

Built for a wargames club for their summer exhibition display battle - this will be a representation of the German invasion of England in Summer 1940, a "what-if?" , fighting out a battle, of the kind that would have hapened for real had the Germans invaded in September-October 1940. Hence the German infantry figure (Matchbox/Revell) added for scale.