Ingle-doodles

I had some time over the weekend so created a template from my Inglenook v3 mock-up that could be used as a basis for sketching some scenic ideas. When I originally worked through this idea the look of the right-hand end was established in my mind, and the left hand to be simple and have plenty of greenery and a grounded NG wagon body. 

The more I thought about it, the low height of the backscene (95mm) would actually make this look rather odd, especially as there was no height for trees. Conversely, in this small space I actually felt the need to constrain the railway in some way... So this was sketch 1, I gave up on adding more detail as I realised those buildings might be a bit grand in scale!

The building end flat against the backscene was intended to use a (4mm scale) 3D print I picked up recently, it appears in the next two sketches at proportions closer to reality! 

I liked the lay of the buildings in that original sketch but needed to reduce them to much smaller buildings. There are no 7mm equivalents of the Wills kits to bash so I looked at alternatives. One is a very old set of Highfield vacuum formed sides that I have for a Highland Railway brake van, bought cheaply with the idea of building a grounded body. Here it sits in the centre of the scene, with a concrete hut based on a 422 Modelmaking kit on the right.

The grounded body (and extension on the right) serves to cover the pull rods that would be fitted to the points to allow operation from behind. These will have to sit within the backscene to allow the whole unit to fit on the box and therefore enclosed from the scenic side.  Although I liked this arrangement I had concerns about the angle the grounded body would sit along the backscene, with the roof potentially getting narrower to the right as space runs out.

However, by switching the grounded body to the right-hand position (on checking the website the 422 building transpired to be a little too long) it sat a lot better, with the bonus of more space around the door. In the centre I have added a new brick/tile building representing the back of an open-fronted farm store, the roof carefully calculated to meet the backscene at full width and angle away from it.

I've given the right-hand end building a bit more space on this version of the plan, having realised it was too small in the originals. The open-sided variant in the original plan looks great but would not serve to hide the potential to sneak this line off-scene if/when a fiddle-stick is added.

Colin