a small diorama

I am a member of the Great Cockcrow Railway, a 7 1/4" gauge miniature railway in Lyne, Surrey.  It was decided that we could promote ourselves better, so a stand was provided at the Egham and Staines model railway exhibition, with myself operating a portable track outside with my engine Lulubelle.  The stand was very good, lots of pictures, a laptop playing the DVD we sell, a "name the part of the engine" competition and even a small loco!

We also had a diorama of "Jungle Halt".  This was built by myself and fellow Cockcrow-ite Steve Trower.  Its nothing more than a bit of old shelving with some Hornby set track left over from a train set pinned to it.  This didn't require any weathering as GCR track is aluminium on black plastic sleepers! Steve layed the track and built the foundation of the scenery (including the rather natty little station platform), whereas I did the green bits.  This comprised mostly of assorted Woodlands Scenics scatter and clump foliage.  The trees were sea moss sprayed with aerosol glue, then rolled in a mix of scatter and clump, they were then glued to the back scene.  This was a bit of a bodge, simply painted white, but we ran out of time!  If I could change anything it would be to sort the back scene and get rid of that awful "edge" along the bottom!

The loco is an old K's GNR Atlantic (Steve's) painted in GNR livery and numbered 1442 for the simple reason that we have it at the GCR!  The coach was knocked up by Steve out of thin ply emulating the real coaches.

Animals were Kinder Egg things.  Jungle halt is populated on open Sundays by lots of stuffed animals!

It was the second time I exhibited a model I had built, though this one was a team effort.  Its currently in store for the next time, but it did rather set into motion the idea of a larger "Cockcrow" layout.....