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.