HOW TO

While taking a break from building layouts, Paul Gosden created a fascinating scrapyard diorama. Meanwhile, weathering supremo George Dent shares a range of practical tips for creating your own scrapyard scenes.

After spending several years building two layouts, ‘Chadwick’ (MR212) and ‘Ledleigh Depot’ (MR258), plus a couple of depot-based layouts for Freightliner, depicting Leeds Midland Road and Crewe Basford Hall, Paul Gosden decided to have a break from larger projects and concentrate on smaller dioramas for a while.

Paul says: “As I had worked for London Transport on a five-year apprenticeship starting in 1964, I have always been interested in modelling the buses on which I worked, including RTs, RTLs, RFs and, of course, the best bus ever built for London – the Routemaster.”

“I worked at Aldenham bus works for six months as part of my training and it was when I was working in the accident shop that a battered and twisted Routemaster appeared in the workshop.” The bus had caught fire at Marble Arch, owing to oil leaking from the flywheel. Unsurprisingly, this bus was eventually scrapped, although it left a lasting mark on Paul. “During the course of the fire investigation, I was working on the chassis area with a 27mm spanner trying to undo a nut which had become virtually welded to the frames with the heat of the fire. The nut suddenly gave way and the large spanner slipped and hit me in the mouth, breaking one of my teeth!”

When the Routemasters were withdrawn, many were sent for scrapping at PVS Carlton, a famous bus breaker’s yard near Barnsley. “After employing Google Earth to view the real scrapyard from above, I soon appreciated that it was much bigger than I’d originally thought. Therefore, I decided to concentrate on one area, allowing the whole scene to fit within a modestly sized diorama case, just a couple of feet long.”