Spring 2025 was a busy time with lots of time out of the country on business and on holiday. I did however make a lot of progress on the layout focussing on the distillery and river scenes on the lower scenic level.
Once the back scene and scenery were installed, attention turned to the distillery buildings. I had purchased 2 distillery kits from PopUp Designs while at the Perth Model Railway Show in June 2024. These were constructed and painted last summer with the intention of using them in this extended scenic section constructed after I moved the helix. The kits were simple to make and I painted them with a textured paint I purchased at the show from Squires, a favourite show vendor of mine.
It was becoming clear that as constructed the distillery buildings were not going to fit the space I had to work with so I took the Dremel and knife to the warehouse and split to length ways to make it low profile. I had another larger building from PopUp Designs but just couldn’t make it work. I wanted a building that I could use for loading and unloading and drive the wagons through so I decided to scratch build my own. I had some foam board and plasticard sheets left from another project so knocked out the building frame in a few hours to try for size. The building was painted using the same textured render paint though as you can see from the images below, several coats were required.





For the hand standing of the distillery I used Das Clay, including between the rails. Fortunately the clay takes several days to dry properly so I had plenty time to ensure the wagons ran correctly through the hard standing but simply pushing wagons through the clay ensuring good running. Once dry, the hard standing was weathered using a variety of weathering powders simply rubbed on. The distillery buildings weather further detailed with sliding doors roof vents, roof tiles and down pipes. Copper paint was also applied to the pergola cap.


Around the distillery area further heather bushes were planted and more trees were spun up, flocked, and installed.



One of the more detailed and fiddly jobs was the installation of the wire fence. This took ages before I finally found the knack to doing this quickly, though my eyes definitely struggled to thread the wire through each fence post!




Next up was track painting and ballasting. Track was painted with an Humbrol dark rust and ballast was a red granite (N gauge) from Natural Scenics.


The distillery scene on the lower scenic level was only possible after I moved the helix and that was only possible after I replaced the railway room door to open outwards. Project ‘Helix Move’ began last summer, and led to a complete rebuild of this side of the layout from the framework up (to the top level) While there were will always be further details to add to the distillery and scenery, for now, this area is now complete and formally completes the ‘Helix Move’ project.
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