Making a start

I've been meaning to get round to this blog for a few months.  I started building this model railway 12 months ago (or may be it's been longer than that).  As far as possible I wanted to build all the scenery from scratch.  The track is a very basic double oval with a branch line based on no particular region.  To be honest the trains are just an excuse for modelling.

I started with building the bridge and pub.  I still need to do the water.

The bridge wall is made of hardboard with DAS glued to it with PVA.  I read on a model makers blog somewhere about making a stamp out of plastic card to imprint the outline of the stones into the DAS.  Works very well. The pub is made of Plastikard following the scratch building method in Geoff Taylor's excellent DVD "Building Buildings" which I got for Christmas. That DVD inspired me to want to scratch build all of the scenery.  I visit from time to time to look at some of the models - the quality is way out of my league but something to aim for. I've also used some of the brass etchings featured there.