EXPERT MODELLERS SHOW YOU HOW

Chris Nevard has been busy creating a tasty slice of the South Wales Valleys on his latest layout commission. In the first of a series of features, Chris explains how he created the key colliery buildings.

PART ONE

PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS NEVARD

One of the fun things about model railways is that they’re never finished. There’s always something more to do, whether it’s a simple refresh of an individual scene or the installation of superior buildings or, perhaps, an electrical upgrade. Sometimes, however, it could be a whole new layout extension.

Regular readers may recall a Workbench feature about the construction of a small harbour which appeared in MR277 (Summer 2020). The layout at the heart of that feature was ‘Neath Riverside’, a layout I built with a distinct South Wales theme. The customer for whom I’d built the layout had subsequently managed to expand his railway room, and this meant that ‘Neath Riverside’ could be extended into an ‘L’ shape, as opposed to a linear end-to-end arrangement. Various ideas were considered but, being South Wales, it didn’t take long to realise that the extension would have to be based around a colliery!

We’ll look at the baseboards, track and scenery in a later instalment but, first, I wanted to create some appropriate buildings for the colliery…