The Bunny Hutch

An obscure FR reference as a title for a blog post about a carriage, but I shall explain.

Himself's usually prodigious productivity has been curbed slightly in recent weeks, first by a sunshine holiday and then starting work on a luxury apartment for his granddaughter's guinea pigs.

He has been doing a little modelling, though, applying the first coats of paint to the latest Superbarn, 118.

(In case you were wondering, the Bunny Hutch title is a nod to the legendary sales kiosk on the FR - you can read more about it here.)

Gap Site

When I popped in on Himself at the weekend I had a chance to take a peek at how the penultimate house looks in its position on the layout.

This is the view from the public side of the layout which shows the back of the house.

At the moment it is sitting far too high and we'll have to take off the piece off plywood which is currently covering over the gap in the baseboard so the house can be sunk down to its proper level.

This is the view that the operators will see.

It won't be too much longer until the bungalow is finished and we can get this housing estate scene wrapped up, which will be very satisfying.

Bunglalow Building

So the easy bit has been done, the solid house bit of the bungalow is finished.

Since I last posted about it I have added all the finishing details like the chimney, the ridge tiles, the brick foundations and the guttering.

The last part of the build now is to fabricate the large conservatory which is attached to the left hand end of the back of the house.

Slates Sorted

Now the roofing slate sections are cut and fitted it definitely could not be mistaken for anything other than a bungalow.

The pieces on the lower half are perhaps the biggest I've had to cut on any of the Oberon Wood houses using the best part of a full Wills sheet each.

At the back you can see that I have also added the outhouse which made this piece the most challenging one to cut out.

(Truth be told, I did have to do it twice.)

There's not too much left to do on the main part of the house but that big conservatory is never far from my mind.

A Simple Box

I've spent the last couple of days completing the window and door details on the two main sides of the bungalow.

You'll notice that the house, like most others, is divided into two sections, at least as far as the roof profile is concerned, but at least this time is a basic, simple, straightforward box shape.

I've put on the window cills at this stage which will save me at least one item on the snagging list towards the end of the build.

Another feature which is worthy of note is how far inset the front door is, which makes this front section of the house rather more three dimensional than these usually are when I'm preparing them.

The next bit is the really exciting bit - gluing them together into a box.

You'll notice that I have now fixed the part with the stone cladding effect in place.

There are two intermediate walls to separate the roof heights.

This house could be completed in double-quick time were it not for the fact that it still needs a big conservatory added onto the back - or the front as the layout viewers will see it.

The Long House

Being a bungalow what you notice first about the pieces of this house - the last of the ones I'm building - is how long and thin the main front and back sections look.

You may be wondering why there's a huge rectangle cut out of the side of one of them it's because that is where the section with the stone cladding will go.

In the last post I described how I had set the windows much further back, and that is the reason for the cut out, so that the back of the windows can poke through the hole and it can fit neatly on top of the main section of the wall behind making it look like the stone cladding has been added to an existing wall.

I'll be taking particular care with this bungalow because I know progress will be monitored closely.

The owners have family links to the FR and they've come along and seen Bron Hebog when we've exhibited the layout in the goods shed at Dinas on a couple of occasions and taken a close interest in the development of the estate scene and I know they've been looking forward to seeing their house modelled.

I hope we can do it justice.

One Last Time

Finally, after a number of years, I'm onto the final house to complete the Oberon Woods estate scene.

This one is, architecturally speaking, the simplest of the buildings I've had to make, being 'just' a bungalow.

However there is always a catch and this house has two of them - a big conservatory at the back and some ornamental stone cladding on the front which I scribing by hand in my usual manner.

If you're thinking that those windows look wonky, you're right. They are meant to be.

With the stone cladding added to the walls it means that the window frames on this bit are set further back than on the rest of the building, which is rendered, so to represent that I've used 60 thou strip to build up the back of the window openings before adding the frame detail.

How this fits in with the rest of the building I will show you next time.

One More To Go

The last details have been completed on the penultimate house for the Oberon Wood scene.

I added the ridge tiles, the gutters and the down pipes to finish it off

It feels good to be able to move on now to the last of the houses in a project within a project which has been going on for a number of years now.

Bricking It

Two of the remaining jobs have been ticked off.

The window cills have been stuck on now and I've added the brick courses which show below the render line.

This is another reason why I raise the houses up on a substantial foundation.

Not only does it allow us to sink the building into position on the layout we also need to have a surface behind the main walls to stick the brick pattern styrene onto.

To look correct the render must stand proud of the brickwork and this is achieved on the model by having the walls made of 60 thou styrene while the embossed brick sheet is only half the thickness.

An interesting feature on this house is how the land will have to fall away at the side of the garage where the line of the brickwork shows the change in level,

At the front there is a raised platform in front of the garage and there will be steps leading down to the door.

Although with the front being hidden from the public viewing side it's only going to be the operators who will usually see all this,

Under Cover

You can start to see the end of the build when you get the roof on a house.

The full shape of the property is clear now that I've got the sheets of slates fitted and you can clearly see how it is made up of three distinct sections.

At the back I've added the dormer window on the upper floor and you can also see the small bin store which is joined onto the back of the garage.

The chimney which is embedded in back corner of the upper storey has also been built up.

The next steps will be to raise it all up on its foundations before adding the ridge tiles, the guttering and the window ledges.

Once this one's done there's just one more house to go. Yippee!

The Upstairs End

The house will start to make a bit more sense by the end of this post, I hope, to those of you who are not acquainted with the quirky estate beside Beddgelert station.

Laid out flat the parts for the two storey section look typically angular and unconventional.

As I begin to put them together you can see how this segment of the house is joined to the rest of it.

And along the back there is one single piece which ties both bits of the house together, giving us the first impression of the shape of the whole property.

It has yet to have the windows and doors marked out and cut - that's the next job,

Grey Pony

Followers of progress on the FR will know that parts of the real Welsh Pony are being painted at Boston Lodge just now, and it seems to have motivated Himself to do something to our version.

This is the ill-fated Mercian kit - with a chassis that cannot be built without a great deal of bodging - and as you can see the arrangement is rather unconventional with the motor placed in the frame rather than fixed to the chassis.

We are hoping to finish our model in the same livery as the locomotive when its restoration is complete.

As it is likely to appear initially with a temporary paint job it looks like we will have to play the waiting game a while longer.

Back To Front

Another evening session resulted in the windows and doors being cut out of the big wall along the back and the frame detailing added.

I call it the back but in reality this is more like the front of the property for us because this is the side that faces the viewing side of Bron Hebog, so I've got to make sure it looks good.

With the piece glued into place the house has reached that illusory stage where you think you're making rapid progress and it won't be very long until it's finished.

Very soon you realise that there's a lot more to do - the foundations, the roof, all the window cills and guttering - and they all take a lot longer to do than you might expect.

Sprayed Superbarn

118 has got to the stage were Himself is ready to start painting it, which begins with a coat of primer.

In recent years he's been using red primer but he seems to have switched back to grey - I have no idea why.

(In fact the bogies appear to have been sprayed red. Maybe the can just ran out?)

It'll probably be a couple of weeks before he's able to put some of the top coat on so for the moment he's put it up on the display shelf in the study along with a few of our other superbarns including the service car and 150.

They look rather nice, don't you think?

Central Section

I've made more progress on the house in the last couple of days with what may possibly be the simplest section of building I've yet to make for Bron Hebog.

This is the central - or bungalow - section of the house.

It all looks a bit odd for the moment, especially as it only has three sides.

What will happen next is that there is a two storey block which will be added on the left and then another wall along the back which will link up with the rear of the garage.