Birdhouses and Brick Walls

The office building for 'Odsock Corner was last seen a a month or so ago. I'd like to say that there has been progress since then but in reality there has been very little. However, I have added one little feature which takes two forms of inspiration. Firstly a few weeks ago at the Immingham exhibition I was observing the 7mm layout 'Invermire' and spotted that the signal box featured a bird nesting box, something you rarely see modelled.

This coincided with my youngest daughter bringing home bird box designs for a school project, so the end result was the construction of a box for the gable end of the office building. Front and back are 20 thou black styrene, the sides are 40 x 100 Evergreen strip and two offcuts of 20 thou for the roof. The 0.7mm brass wire perch actually runs all the way though and doubles up as a mounting point and something to secure during painting.

The office and all it's accessories then had a scrub down to prepare for primer and painting, and attention turned to creating the basic structure of the brick 'estate wall' that forms part of the scenic divide between the sides of the pizza. I had envisaged this being foam core with embossed styrene brickwork and planned to (perhaps) draw some inspiration from this wall and gateway at Belton House, Lincs.

However whilst mocking up the wall on the baseboard I happened to use some strips of 5mm ply that had originally been cut for the baseboard edging before I chose to substitute stripwood. At 36mm high these were great for a wall about 5 feet tall. So after a bit of cutting I had pieces the right size, with some 3mm ply used to add depth to the gateposts and as an additional support pillar where the angle of the wall changed (this pillar may change in development). The gaps at the top of the gateposts were filled with more ply by gluing in oversize pieces and trimming them down once set!

Now comes the thing that has caused the most angst... the brick bond. By rights the wall should be garden wall bond, three rows of stretchers, then a row of headers, repeat... Whilst South Eastern Finecast do make this in embossed styrene, my stocks are offcuts of Slaters plain bond (all stretchers) and Flemish bond (alternating stretchers and headers in each row), and SEF plain bond. The Slaters Flemish bond is a very off-square sheet and I think I had the best bits for the wall on 'The Headshunt'. 

I am trying to keep costs to a minimum and the postage on single sheets of styrene is almost as much as the sheet. Luckily it appears that through the power of the internet a kind hearted 7mm narrow gauge modeller may have some offcuts for me... 

Colin