Catcott, 16 May 2008, added the hairy bits to the right hand side, a mix of hanging basket liner and Silfor, in turn colour adjusted with this odd greeny PVA mix I made up some years ago which has been used on both Arne Wharf and Cement Quay, stippled on with a 1 inch brush. Before setting, the fibres were brushed upwards with some L shaped tweezers. The grass was then finished off with a buff colour matt emulsion just on the tips of the blades. This way the Silfor and hanging basket liner blend quite well. Still some tidying up of stray hairs to do.As per the real structure, there was a water butt, this is simply a tube of corrugated plasticard wrapped around 1/2" chopped off the end of a pencil after failing to find anything white metal at Expo EM today. In the event scratchbuilding only took a few minutes. One of the shots shows just how close the front of the cottage was to the running line (as was the real thing). There will be a little low fence from old sleepers in due course between the cottage and the railway and probably some other standard Exmouth Junction style sheds etc.
To replicate the very fine chicken wire on the gates, I dug out some gift wrapping ribbon (gauze with 0.5 mm holes), having decided that the supplied gauze was way to course (scale 6 inch holes, probably OK for gauge 1).Still much to do, one of the bigger jobs being trees and some signals to protect the crossing. One will be a LSWR latice (bought today from Wizard Models at Expo EM), the other, a tall wooden S&D post maybe, like the one at Bason Bridge. The low relief shed will look better when the end has a bush there to hide the transition to backscene.
The muddy area in front of the cottage, will be a vegetable patch/allotment soon.