Bae Ceredigion: Nant-geseiliog farm (N part 39)…

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a wonderful photo in C.C.Green’s second Cambrian volume, of Nant-geseilliog farm on the coast line north of Tonfanau…

A structure that just had to be modelled. 

Whilst there is no place for such a piece on the existing Cambrian 500mm plank there will be space on the next project… consider this another of those ‘statements of intent’. No drawings though, and perhaps a bit far to go and measure the prototype, Google Earth came to the rescue with a chimney to chimney measurement allowing me to scale the photograph and produce a rough dimensioned sketch - certainly good enough for a layout rather than showcase model.

I’ve spent two or three weeks thinking about this project, trying to decide on approach, materials and how I would go about building it… my first thought was card and following a Pendon approach, and I even did a few tests using mounting board. However, I felt that in N this might prove tricky to manage in terms of its smaller size and fidelity of folds and cuts in this material, let alone the challenges of colour and texture. My ‘go to’ is styrene and I found a nice quality sheet of Slaters 40thou to work with, I marked out the front wall, drilled 1mm holes in the corner of the windows and moved quickly from there to a full structure. I chose some thinner 15 thou (I think it might have been 20) for the roof to allow me to curve he roofline to look as if the roof has collapsed over time, that classic ‘Pendon’ cottage look so difficult to obtain unless scratch building.

I filled any gaps and wafted on some primer, things were looking very good. How to model the actual textures and colours in N though? I was pretty sure I wanted to use paint and talc for the render, but not certain about the roof. Slates, and worn, but walking about the village here I noticed that from a normal distance there is so little visible texture with a slate roof. However I tried a flat ‘printed’ Scalescems texture and it didn’t work. The horizontals, which although quite flat in reality, didn’t have enough emphasis with just a flat printed surface. I cut a few strips of paper and applied them using Pritstik to the rear (un detailed) roof to check how they looked, and the result, whilst not entirely scale was pleasing.

Buoyed up by the success and relative ease of use I pushed on and starting building up the layers on the front in the same manner, cutting around the dormer windows. A coat of primer over the lot (top) revealed a few places I need to re-stick, but overall the texture I had hoped for, and a good base to move to colour. 

Is there anything to be learned from this cute little model? It uses tried and trusted methods and so forms another example of how my blind spot that ‘N is too small’ has been proven wrong. This is fiddly, yes, but full of character. The challenge of working with textures and working out an approach to use is enjoyable and is pushing me just enough out of my comfort zone. British N has a great deal to offer us, and I hope through my journey I can open a few others to the opportunities available with out of the box N gauge models. Until next time, more soon…

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