BRM Magazine; a holiday cottage in TT:120

When I was asked to contribute some practical articles to British Railway Modelling magazine, the first of the deadlines was for this; personalising a Hornby TT:120 'Shepherds Rest' cottage.

I've not modelled in this scale before, and after some thought, decided to model it as a holiday cottage. Something colourful and jolly anyway.

I decided to standardise for this article series on A4 sized bases (a plan which quickly went out the window with the later builds), and planned something inspired by Hellandbridge Level Crossing, near Bodmin. Google it, and look at how inspiring this scene is/was when it was open to trains.

The scenic work was done using scrap materials, all bits of card and foamboard offcuts, and some filler which was surprisingly still pliable despite lurking in the shed for over a year...

I'll be honest, a snow-scene was tempting at this point, except that...

...BRM had sent a selection of flowers, greenery and so on, and I had a lot of my own bits and pieces to draw on too. In the real world at this point, Spring had Sprung, so doing something colourful and flowery became the order of the day.

A few modifications were made to the building, like painting on curtains, and repainting the roof before some light weathering.

Using various dried moss, scatter, and such, I wanted it to look slightly overgrown with flowers.

I also added on a conservatory to the back, though had to add some greenery to hide how slightly crude it came out. Moral of the story, use finer plastic strip...

The shoot was undertaken in the back garden at the in-laws, as at this point (end of April) there was a bit more greenery there compared to our own garden.

I only have a single TT:120 loco at the moment, one of the Hornby 08's. I wish I'd weathered it a bit, though at this point I was thinking of selling it on, so didn't want to mess it up. Ironically, following this project, I'm tempted to hang onto it in case I do some more modelling in TT.

Lacking another building for the other side of the cottage, I chopped up and repainted a scrap Minitrix N gauge station building.

Oooh, arty greyscale. Again, might have looked nicer if I'd weathered the loco, but whatever.

...aaaand in print. As usual the BRM team make it look great on the page!