Moving on from Paper and Pencil?

It's four months (yes really) since I last posted my thoughts on the scenic treatment for my O9 interpretation of the Julian Andrews brickworks plan. Since then there has been little creative thought about the project until this week. In fact there has been more thought on alternative schemes but they have all drawn a blank...

There are a few items that I wish to use on the project and in some ways these are either driving or stopping my thoughts on how the scene should look. One of these is a photograpic backscene, and I was having a few thoughts that this could be overpowering to the scene, especially compared to my usual "restrained" style. To test how it would look I downloaded the images of it from the internet and resized them to full size and then printed in draft, temporarily mounting them on a spare piece of ply. With the addition of new dummy foreground trees, better representing the two Skale Scenics examples I wish to use on the project, this doesn't look too bad. 

My attention then turned to the grouping of buildings on the right hiding the return curve. As mocked up this is the building shown last time (based on one I built a few years ago) with a modified Airfix/Dapol water tank behind. This didn't look quite right, to me it looks too obvious that the line can curve through the structure. But what if the building moved back and the track entered a lean-to at the side? There would be enough of the main building wall visible to trick the eye, as in the first sketch.

Wishing to incorporate the water tank and break the roof line up a little I created the second sketch, turning the main building roof through 90 degrees. The lean-to would have a more varied roofline where it leant on the water tank supports (brick piers would replace the kit pillars). This would have to be one carefully planned, removable structure but I think it is a much better trick on the eye to hide the return curve.

I even have a potential prototype for part of the structure, this field shelter at Hall Farm Park in Lincolnshire. I would envisage it repurposed as a small workshop, perhaps with a Land Rover parked half in/out. 

There is something to be said for keeping the structures simple, I am yet again reminded of Neil Rushby's 'Isle of Avalon Tramway' (seen here with a later owner) - the simplicity of the structures hiding the sector plate on the left is very deceiving, there is little actual detail but interest is created by shape and colour. 

Thinking cap firmly on...

Colin