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Beginner's Guide to Building a Layout - Part 13
Yvonne Shillabeer

Finishing touches

The mill has had a wall erected around the yard. The Metcalfe model provides a sheet of additional parts - blank walls, walls with windows etc., from which the walls were made. Two pieces were sandwiched together, producing a more suitable thickness and stonework on both sides. The gate pillars were formed by folding the card having first scored it. Scalelink provide suitably grand, but not over the top, etched brass gates.

The yard itself is still unfinished - time prevented any scatter being laid, but maybe a cobbled finish might be better.

The bottom of the hill where it meets the road looked rather bare, so two Kestrel kits were put into service. This kits had been assembled a few years ago, but are still available. I had bought the shop kit for my husband to assemble in hospital, model making can be very therapeutic!

The location for the kits had already decorated with scatter and would not make very good gardens. So the kits were fitted to a piece of 30 thou. plasticard. This also allowed the gardens to be detailed away form the layout on the workbench. The first parts to be fitted were garden walls made from brick embossed plasticard. Liquid polystyrene cement was used to hold it all together.

The walls were pained using brick red enamels, followed by a rough covering of khaki - this gave a representation of weathering. A mixture of khaki and dark brown was used to cover the ground, some people use green paint under green scatter but when the scatter chips off, green earth is revealed!

The large garden behind the shop had a raised terrace created at the bottom of the garden by cutting the plasticard base and inserting 60 thou. plasticard to raise it up. On this terrace a Kestrel greenhouse and a Biltezi garden shed were fitted. P&D Marsh beehives are at the very bottom of the garden.

Being rather proud of their garden, the occupants keep the lawn neatly cut. The stripe effect was created by cutting strips of masking tape 4mm wide (2 foot wide lawnmower) and laying them on the lawn area. PVA adhesive was painted onto the strips not covered by masking tape and light green scatter sprinkled on. The masking tape was peeled off soon after, before the glue dries (if you peel off the tape after the glue has dried, then large parts of the green scatter get pulled up as well). After the glue has dried, removed excess scatter and paint more glue into the gaps between the scatter and put down a darker green scatter. Once the surplus has been removed, you are left with stripy grass.

Dark grey scatter was laid for paths, and brown represents earth. Flowers are 4D Models scatter. The other two gardens have outside toilets from Dornaplus kits. Preiser figures and washing lines complete the scene.

At the front of the buildings are pavements made using Mainstreet kits. These produce rather nice looking pavement. The drystone walling is 4D Models and the wooden fence is Slaters.