A row of cottages in the making….

It's been a while since my last post and things have been a bit all over the place as usual. A flurry of activity and then a major stall - maybe I'm losing interest, or maybe I'm just too taken up by other things at the moment to devote much time to modelling. Certainly the nice weather of late has meant more time out in the garden than indoors gluing small bits of plastic to other bits of plastic… :)

In terms of the layout, well I've decided to relay the track yet again, and have gone for a 4 track mainline layout that will cross a viaduct  - an unprototypical 4 track viaduct that has now been built and is in the mid-stages of being painted (but more of that in a later post (hopefully)

Now - back to the topic of the post…

Some time ago in my last post I mentioned the building of a row of cottages and I'm pleased to say that progress has been made

I tried a different technique for this: The elevations have all been plotted with the Roland vinyl cutter - all outlines, window and door openings and all stone courses cut with the plotter.

Following this the outlines and openings were trimmed with a scalpel and assembled with UHU.

With all the courses initially "Scribed" by the plotter's knife, all I had to do then is follow the lines with my trusty dart tip, distressing the rough stones and leaving the cills and lintels plain:

It took ages to draw out the elevations in Illustrator initially, especially the stone courses (it would be easier if it were regular, even blocks of stone as you could copy/paste, but saves a lot of painstaking effort with the set square and greatly reduces the "wonky verticals" I get when scribing the verticals freehand.



I tried to film myself left handed - hence the blurriness… It's also not too easy following the courses with the dart when you're looking through the view-finder….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPtvBA76xoY

Once over - scribed, I  then took to painting up the walls, using Wilkinsons "Safari Sand" as the base colour and then dry brushing with a brown emulsion and further weathering with Humbrol Weathered Black:

The Windows were constructed with my usual method of making drawings of the separate window elements - the outside frame, the lower sash and the upper sash with frame, plotting them all out on self adhesive vinyl and then laminating together onto clear plastic, then gluing from behind.

Then…

disaster…

One of my young cats got into the garage where I'd left the model, jumped up onto a shelf where I've got some offcuts of wood stored and sent a heavy lump of oak skittering down to the terrace cottage below…

Result:

As you can see, I'd added all the windows, added net curtains and curtains to all the windows and made a start on the roof before this tragedy befell me…

*cue rather deep sigh*

I'm pretty sure this is salvageable, but unfortunately I just don't have the time or indeed the inclination right now, but rest assured, I WILL fix and finish this model - too much time has gone into it to dismiss it to the great dustbin of despair!

In the meantime - here's a hut it took me 2 years to make (and it's still not finished)