O Gauge Quaymasters Cottage - finished

Another little piece of modelling I have finished off recently is the Quaymasters cottage. This building will sit at the front of the layout and act as a scenic break towards the tiny fiddle stick where I have the point levers and DCC controller. This project has been a long one, due to the house move and various house renovation tasks that have got in the way. I think I started building this sometime in 2022 but any momentum was continually broken with other domestic tasks!

This side faces the viewing side of the layout, with the office door open, so the interior can be seen.

This is the track side, which faces the backscene. Ironically I prefer the blue door on this side compared to the black door on the viewing side - typical!

The kit comes from Fair Price models, which provides a basic wooden shell. Once built the shell was coated with PVA glue and a layer of polyfilla was added. This was sanded down and any imperfections were infilled, before a final sand off. The exterior walls were then painted a dark grey, before scribing the polyfilla with a sharp point to create the stonework. The stone colours were dry brushed onto this base, before a quick varnish and the application of a couple of weathering washes. The windows/doors/interior details were then added, before the roof was glued down and the the roof tiles added. The roof tiles are thin card cut to shape, which then had some base colour coats added, with some dry brushing on top. The guttering is from Modelu, with some plasticard downpipes.

The cottage with the basic stonework scribed.

Without being too critical of my own modelling, there are a couple of bits I could have improved - namely the overhang of the tiles to the guttering - it is probably 1mm to short. The Modelu guttering has quite a thick edge and I did not account for his when placing the tiles on. However, otherwise it is all good and for now I will have to live with the guttering! The interior and lights really add an extra dimension to this model and as the building will be positioned at the viewing edge of the layout - these interior elements should be visible.

The interior of the Quaymasters cottage.

With the internal lights switched on.

So another modelling project ticked off for the layout. I am looking forward to placing this onto the layout and blending it into the scene. One of the skills I wanted to develop with building the O gauge layout was my capacity to scratchbuild/detail buildings. I feel these skills are slowly starting to get there and I am feeling more confident about tackling other building projects for the layout. However, the time and space to set up the layout just does not seem to arrive at present. Hopefully towards the end of August I will manage to find a week of time, but the next tranche of layout detailing might have to wait until September. At least that will give me a little time to finish off the class 33 so I can have a few trains to play with....