The humble lineside hut. Built in their thousands and most swept away without a second thought. Not as pretty as a station, or as drool-worthy and representative of a company as a signal box, but nevertheless part of the historical infrastructure.
Why then, more than any model building do we not scratch build these simple structures? Instead dumping the same Wills and Ratio homogeneous lumps onto the layouts when there are gorgeous little things like this to make?
Wills kits? Guilty as charged m'lud. I'm hanging my head s I've just bough lamp huts and sheds by the aforementioned manufacturer. I may use them on Compass Point but will make sure they are well painted and weathered. In my defence, other structures will be scratch built.
ReplyDeleteBut you are right, they are lovely little buildings worthy of our attention.
In a lot of cases, even where there is still a requirement for storage or whatever it's often easier/cheaper to get rid of a existing building and replace with a modern Tupperware blob which will then attract graffiti.
ReplyDeleteHam Street has a couple of nice sheds, there's a wiggly tin one on the up platform which I suspect was the lamp room and a rather posh brick example round the back which was the outbuilding for the station house.
I'm not sure why the Wills wiggly tin shed is so popular (availability I suppose) as if used as intended it really isn't very typical with that huge vent in the roof and the fire bucket rack on the side. It's easy enough to remove the vent and use two plain walls to get one typical shed out of a pack of two but then what do you do with the other one?
The Ratio shed that is a freebie with Feb '14 RM will no doubt appear ad nauseum on layouts up and down the country (and one of its N gauge brothers is Fidley's PW hut) but again it is a bit of an unusual design......I can't recall ever seeing a building like it even in a photo with 2 courses of stone topped with wood planking. I would be intrigued to know what Ratio based it on, if anything.
Even the old SR concrete huts that looked like they would last forever are getting scarcer. Current practice seems to be to smash the supports so the roof drops on top of resultant pile of rubble.
Am I right in thinking that the hut in your photo is made from boards and battens? I bought a couple of sheets of Evergreen B&B when Modelzone were flogging it cheap, so always on the lookout for suitable uses for it.
These little sheds, huts, bothies, whatever are another of those things that can give a layout character. Trouble is, they are and always have been an attractive target for the kit manufacturer as they are cheap but profitable (bit like a wagon kit but without having the bother of wheels and transfers).....and of course now there are the various ready to plonk things as well.
The ease of use of all this stuff means that a lot of modellers see a space on the layout and, hey presto, messrs Ratio, Wills, Cooper Craft, Bachmann, Hornby and even Cambrian can fill it for you.......only a fiver!
All very nice, but of course it means that everyone's layout has similar buildings.
You are quite right, of course.....it's both very easy, even cheaper and a lot more satisfying to scratch build something unique.
The later buildings (signal box and tin shed) on Fidley were scratch built, research for these was fun and I think they have turned out quite nicely.
Now I wonder what to do with my freebie Ratio hut that everyone else won't have done?
Stig.
Nicely put Si. I will have a look at my Ratio lamp hut and see if I can disguise its origin.
ReplyDelete