Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Low relief buidings and bridges in Hornby Magazine Yearbook

Down south, something stirs...

A few years ago, Hornby Magazine started on a rather large layout with the mysterious name "Project 12". It started and then abruptly stopped. Readers asked what had happened for a while but the answers were deliberately non-committal.

The truth was that the office had moved from East Anglia to the midlands and there wasn't the space to build the model. It went into store and Topley Dale was built and featured in the 2012 yearbook.

2013 rolls around and the mag are again in need of a layout. By now a new tin garage offers just enough space for the scenic section to be built and the layout emerges from store. After some re-planning and quite a few changes from its earlier incarnation, the model is now called "Twelve Trees Junction". All looks good except for a rapidly advancing deadline.

This is where I come in.

Along the back of the layout there is a street and since the setting is urban, this street needs buildings. Big, urban ones.

I'm presented with a box of Skytrex castings and left to my own devices. Weeks later, I've painted these, weathered them and scratchbuilt a factory.

At the same time, I've also been building a large bow girder bridge to cross the tracks where they exit on one leg of the junction. This turns out to be a bigger and more complicated job than I though, mainly because drawing a 24 inch diameter circle is harder than I thought.

Anyway, all the exploits are written up in the latest yearbook for your education and entertainment. If Southern Region is your bag, or you just like reading about modelling, follow the link below:

Hornby Magazine Yearbook No.6 on Amazon

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