Stone By Stone

I spent a lot of time over the winter on the buildings at Cwm Cloch Isaf Farm, which lies to the north of Beddgelert station, in the middle of the lower loop of the S bend.

The five buildings range from some very dilapidated traditional stone longhouses to a modern corrugated steel barn.

We're having to play some artistic tricks on this section of the layout, so the buildings have been scaled down to fit in the space we've got available on the layout and to give some perspective and a sense of depth to the viewer.

Francis surveyed the site and made up some cardboard mock ups to finalise the dimensions before sending on to me a wonderfully detailed set of hand drawn plans for each of the buildings which I hope he won't mind me showing here.



Here's how the real building looks, and my version for comparison.





The walls are built from 60" styrene sheet and each stone has been scribed on using a dental pick type thing. I have experimented a couple of times with DAS clay spread onto styrene, hoping it would be softer and easier to scribe, but I've found it is too pulpy and fibreish (I know that's know a word but hope you get my drift) when it's scribed and you don't get the clean, deep scoring effect from scribing into the styrene.

The slates on this model use the 4mm Slaters product, which has to be thinned down underneath at the edges to look right.

This barn, one of the smallest on the site, has now been delivered to our resident artist, Francis, for painting.