Lochdubh: Hardest first…

I figure that if I can get the station built for Lochdubh, then the rest is relatively straight forward. Like eating dinner, worst first, best to last this time, hardest first…

Lochdubh is of course fictitious but in my previous post I shared a sketch of the scheme and ‘almost’ pier like arrangement of the station and yard, heavily inspired by Kyle of Lochalsh. I wanted a station building that wouldn’t dominate the scene, I was also conscious of not copying Kyle, Wick or Thurso. It needed to feel ‘Scottish’ and specifically ‘Highland Railway’ though, so a drawing found on the internet was scaled down to ‘feel right’ and cut down to caricature proportions to fit, this is what appeared in that original post as Chris coined ‘Paddington style’.

A few challenges here though, this is N. This is small, yet I wanted to capture a few key features - namely the windows and roof line. The windows seemed harder - so they were tackled first. The thinner glazing bars and outside edges were drawn in with paint in a bow pen and 1mm square styrene was pre-painted before being cut to 11mm lengths and glued on with glue and glaze. Some strip was also pre-painted, and this was cut to 3mm lengths for horizontal bar. The result, whilst not setting the world on fire felt neat enough and matched the feel of the windows at Dornoch. A piece of wall was cut in 1mm planking and painted white, 30thou styrene set behind it with the opening painted the same blue. 

The result, definitely what I was after, and with this initial success propelling me forwards the build progressed over the weekend. Walls were built and pre painted before gluing together, the chimney was assembled and painted off the model and glued in place, things were looking promising but I was putting off the inevitable challenge of the roof.

In the end I needn’t have worried, using Evergreen H0 scale board and batten upside down gave the familiar outline at the roof edges, slates were cut in 4mm strips overlapped by 2mm. Although I’m not quite finished here I really love how things have turned out.

What’s more important though is I’ve really enjoyed it. Just as much as the farm house, it feels like I’m learning again and that’s a great feeling. I was a little unsure about how neat things were but Chris shared some kind reflection…

I always had this theory that the size of a mistake was not derivative of the modelling scale. Moving up or down in scale only amplified the effect. 

But, at the same time, my other theory of how photography corrupts how we appreciate the work: in real life the way we study a model is kind of fleeting even if we stare at the same thing for the same length of time we still drift around that point. Photographs lock onto one line of view so keep our attention until all we can see is what the photograph instructs us to.

If we can look upon what we’ve made, see ourselves in it, and feel proud of it we have done good work. Those around us, that’s their wish for us for how we’ll spend our lives into this hobby.

Thanks Chris, and thank you for reading this far - it may be small but this micro scene, all fifty odd centimetres of it taps back to the root of my love of trains. This journey, these steel ribbons, threads through our lives, recognising those connections  and interplays are as rewarding as the craft itself. I love model railways. Until next time, more soon…

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