BRM Seaside Shop (part three); Inflatable Unicorns, and a Bag of Chips

A little extra post on the detailing of this set.

I needed a small-ish building to fill the space on the left of the scene, and turned to another Dapol kit from the stash, the Shops and Flat.

This went together even easier than the General Store.

I'm less struck on the design of this kit however, I think it's those odd vent-like windows.

I lost the frontage for the kit, so made my own from plasticard (and of course, found the missing one once this was built and painted). The name might seem a bit odd, but it was the best chippy in the area when I was growing up, on the edge of the Russels Hall Estate in Dudley (and the second appearance in a BRM project, there having been a Blue Submarine chippy on the Metcalfe Cinema build).

A big thing with the project was wanting to contrast the brick-built shop with the loads of colourful kitsch tat outside, the classic seaside shop.

Making it in 4mm scale was going to prove a bit tricky, but I had a spares box full of things like these model aircraft kit wheels, and some damaged 00 scale animals (the bigger ones are Playmobil items).

Fiddly painting, to do a 4ft beachball,out of a plastic toy cannonball.

Inflatable animal floats.

The bike was one of the fiddliest things to paint- think it might be a Peco moulding, it came in a box of odds and ends.

The sort of effect I wanted though, the baskets full of stuff, and the inflatables hanging from the canopy.

They work well with the figures that came off eBay, which needed a little bit of a repaint (partly for modesty purposes as they were a bit scantily clad for a British beach).

BRM Seaside Shop (part two); Setting the Scene

Of course, I could have just photographed the shop on its own, for the article, but I really wanted to do a seaside scene to put it in context.

The inspiration was this bit of Barmouth, on the harbourside, though with the details compressed quite a bit.

This was the first of the projects to break the 'everything on an A4 board, in a Really Useful Box' intention, just because I realised the scene I wanted to do would be a bit of a squish otherwise. Still, I had a load of scraps of wood in stock, and a bigger box spare.

The bridge came courtesy of the wonderful, if financially dangerous, second-hand boxes at Frizinghall Model Railways, and is an old Triang elevated track set. I added some I-beams, and corrugated card underneath.

I wanted a small, but contained, bit of beach on the scene. Dapol steps, and Peco platform edges. The cliff at the back is crumpled paper over some foam.

More foam for the beach.

A lot of filler, and real sand; the water was some ripple-effect plasticard. Everything else was details from the scrap-box.

This was the sort of view I wanted for the header picture, and I was pleased with how it came out; it certainly wouldn't have fit on the original A4 board, but makes for a nice photo diorama for future projects.

There's just room for a single-unit railcar (Lima body on a Hornby chassis), which gives it a bit of a St.Ives atmosphere.

 

BRM Magazine; Seaside Shop in 00 (part one)

As a cursory glance through my photography blog or insta will attest, I like the seaside. Hot days on the beach and colourful, kitsch tat as the subject for photography shoots. So, when asked by BRM to build and personalise the venerable Dapol General Store kit, I thought I'd do a seaside shop; this was, indeed, one of the first builds I did for BRM, and I didn't tell the Editor I was going for full 90's colourful cheese, so they ended up holding the article over for a year to hit the nice weather. 

This is the sort of thing I was thinking about; colourful, plastic rubbish, contrasted with the dour, dull looking old shop.

The kit; warped-walls and all. Still, if using soft recycled plastic allows Dapol to eke a bit more life out of these kits, I'm all for it, I love this range.

Personalising it was a matter of hitting the scrap box; many years of building these kits and making other models using bits of them has resulted in quite the pile of odds and ends.

Painting by the usual method; Citadel acrylics and washes.

I thought the building was very much a boring box, so took a bit of inspiration from Llandudno...

...and added a canopy.

For the window displays, in a rare moment of good timing, the need to photograph a load of toys coincided with us having the props boxes out for our simulated Paediatrics Ward and childs bedroom for a course I was setting up.

More tat! Beads, Playmobil, Airfix animals, aircraft kit tyres, and such.

And there we go.

What I was after, effect-wise; dull browns and greys on the building, colourful tat on the outside.

I wanted a header image, so again raided the spares and bits boxes to build a little set. Loosely inspired by places like Barmouth on the Cambrian Coast.

Shooting at sunrise; the morning sun if anything too low, but I suppose it looks like the sun-worshipers were getting in early.

Second shoot, after work. I'd originally planned to shoot somewhere with a properly dramatic sky, but cheated in the end by printing a shot I took at Harlech a while ago. That way I could focus on photographing the model, not worrying about the weather out on some hillside somewhere. Plus, always an advantage, I was doing the shoot within 10 foot of the teapot.

And there we go. I'll be honest, I absolutely loved this build, it was a great deal of fun. I'm just fighting the temptation now to do a seaside-set model railway for the planned 00 scale layout I'm wanting to build... There'll be a bit more over the next two days (he threatens) on the smaller details.

 

Railway Research Trip: Aberystwyth

Another trip for researching Garden Rail pieces whilst we were in Wales, and blimey, look at that weather! What a difference to Corris...

The law- that all steam locomotives waiting at a platform have to have an old man standing next to them. Bonus points for the dog. Only minor annoyance here is that it wasn't the BR Blue loco, but maybe next time...

The main target of the visit, railway-wise, the new museum. Well I say new, it's been here a few years now, but this was the first time we'd had chance to pop in.

Rather nice miniature loco in the atrium; explains why I couldn't find it to snap a pic of at York the other week.

Yellow Train; spotting this Wins The Game.

The maintenance train is another potential candidate for Garden Rail...

...as is this little beast. Actually we have a kit for one of these in the 'need to get around to it' pile.

Arty shot.

Cattle wagon; we acquired some garden-scale sheep, so it might be worth knocking one or two of these together at some point.

This was my favourite in the museum, I love a chunky little tank loco, and the accompanying carriage looks quite tempting.

Final thoughts? The museum was absolutely worth a look around. It's nicely done, well laid out and with an interesting mix of vehicles preserved safe from the elements. We've only ever visited the Rheidol to sample the cafes at either end of the line (the one here at Aberystwyth this time, very nice indeed), and we're thinking we might give it a go riding the trains at some point this summer.