The Village Centre

In the centre of my mini village I put a row of shops and a corner pub.They are kit sets by Kestrel Designs I made up. I think, when painted up, they look very realistic. Positioning the tiny people was fun, making them appear as if they were chatting or admiring goods in the shop windows or sitting on a bench outside the pub or waiting to cross the road.

The N Scale Village Shops

The Newer Part of the N Scale Village

Beside the pub is the old Norman church. I made the gravestones by painting the offcuts of plastic from the kits. Can you see the gravediggers with their shovel and pick?!
   Behind the shops is the bus stop and the newer part of the village. These kit set houses are a mix of brick Kestrel Design bungalows and American kits for weatherboard houses.
   One of the things I really like about this layout is that every time I look at it, I see something different. It has been a project that has given me an immense amount of satisfaction!

The Miniature Village Layout - Left Side

A Wedding Scene in N Scale

Deciding what to put where was all part of the enjoyment when laying out the miniature village. I made a little hill out of paper clay to put the church on and staged a wedding scene there complete with a tiny bride, groom and wedding guests.
   On the left-hand roadway I placed the largest house in the village surrounded by a stone wall. In the garden is the housekeeper's cottage, a garden shed and a veggie garden with two men working in it.

Also along that side of the road are smaller houses and the village hall. I imagined this to be the older part of the village. The houses are all made of brick with tile roofs. Some are built so close to the road that their front doors open directly on to the footpath, as you see in many old English villages.

The Older Section of the Miniature Village

 Next time I'll write about how I set out the middle section of the village with its shops, church and newer houses. I hope you're enjoying the photos!

Making a Miniature Farm

An N Scale Miniature Farmyard

As part of my N scale village I really wanted a section of it to be a farm. That is why the village layout grew and grew - I had to have paddocks and hills and a farmyard and barn!
   On the board that my husband had cut for me, I made hills and hollows out of paper clay. I arranged them so that the back of the board was a bit higher than the front. Then I marked out the position of the house and barn and the farm track and circular driveway. 
   Once the paper clay had thoroughly dried, I painted it with dark green paint, leaving the track and driveway bare. While the paint was still wet I shook grass scatter over it. This was particularly messy! Even though I had put down a double sheet on the studio floor to work on, I still managed to get bits of green stuff everywhere.

Animals and Buildings in N Scale

   I left it overnight then took the board outside and gave it a gentle shake. The bits of grass scatter that hadn't stuck blew away. On the balder-looking patches I sprayed glue and shook scatter over those again. The final touch was to give everything a good swoosh of hair spray.
   For the driveway and farm track I painted glue straight onto the board and, using a teaspoon, gently shook fine artist's sand over them. Once they were dry I could get onto the fun part - the landscaping.
   Fences, trees, bushes, flowers; sheep and lambs, cows and calves; the shepherd and his dog, a tractor towing a trailer of supplies, a horse-drawn hay wagon and the farmer standing at the doorway of the farmhouse.

My Miniature Village in N Scale

An N Scale (1:160) Village

The last time I wrote about my N scale buildings I had decided not to do a village layout and instead keep the little houses and churches in a wall cabinet.
   Well, all that has changed! I've reverted to my original idea and for the last three weeks have been working on my mini village. It was a lot of fun planning the layout - how big to have the farm, where to put the pub and the churches, would I have straight streets or curving ones, was there room for a village duck pond?

Churches, Shops and Houses in N Scale

   And I also enjoyed tracking down vehicles and teeny tiny people to populate it.

Farm Animals and Vehicles in N Scale

   
Over the next few blog posts I'll tell you in detail how I made each part of the village. I hope you'll enjoy it!

Making an Auhagen N Scale Kitset

An Auhagen N Scale Kit

I hadn't made one of this brand of N scale kitsets before, and on opening the box, was slightly overwhelmed by the plethora of 'bits' inside. There seemed to be millions of them! But the pictorial instructions were clear, the plastic pieces were well-marked, and there was a diagram of all the numbered shapes as well. It was really just a matter of sorting things out and getting stuck in!
  I started with the two little structures - the garage and shed. These went together easily so I was more confident then about tackling the bigger, more intricate, buildings. 
  The half-timbered effect is achieved by slotting the thin brown fretwork into the grooves on the white walls. It was really easy to get a good fit. The finished pieces look just like the pictures on the box.
  Now I'm looking forward to landscaping them to make a farmyard to go on the outskirts of my N scale village. For something in such a small scale, it seems to be spreading by the day and getting awfully big!

An N Scale Scene in 'Book Case'

Use real books to frame an N scale scene

Today I'd like to showcase my friend Pamela's N scale scene. It is unusual in that she created it within a frame of real books. Such a cool idea!
   She bought several old hardcover Reader's Digest books very cheaply. Firstly she very carefully cut away all of the pages so the spine and covers were left intact. Blocks of wood were inserted in between the covers with the facing edges covered in fabric. Pamela glued together the number of books she would need to frame her scene.

A closeup view of Pamela's N scale scene

   She then created a wooden box to make the scene in.  The scenic backdrop is made of photographs pasted on to the back and sides. This box slides in to the space left between the books.
  Of course the fun part is collecting the bits and pieces, making things, planning what will go where, and setting it all out.
   What I really like about this work of Pamela's is that from one side it looks like a lineup of real books on a shelf. Turn it round and there is the secret surprise - the N scale scene!

N Scale Village Buildings

Displaying N scale buildings

Plans you have made often change, don't they? That's what's happened with my N scale village. I had planned it as a layout similar to a model railway with a village green, farm land, houses clustered round the Norman church, shops on the high street and so on. I made the model buildings and little trees, and bought lots of tiny N scale people figures, several vehicles, and landscaping material.

   Then I set it out. It was enormous! Although not very high, the footprint of the village was larger than my Tudor house, and that's big! Too big. There was no room for it in the studio.

   So I have displayed the buildings in a wall cabinet. You actually get a good view of them and can concentrate on really looking at the details in each house or shop, probably more so than if you looked over a whole layout.

  I really like N scale (1:160). Everything is so tiny yet has remarkable detail. It makes me feel as if I am Gulliver in the land of Lilliput.
  

N Scale Mini Village

A tiny village in N scale

I am having such fun making this miniature village! As you can see, it is very, very small. It's the model railway N scale, that's 1:160, 1 inch equals 160 feet.
   I buy Kestrel Design kitsets. They are reasonably priced and come in a wide range of buildings from this corner pub, to shops, to houses, to railway stations.
   To get them looking very realistic, I hand paint the kitset pieces to take away that initial plastic look. For the brickwork, I first of all dab a layer of cream paint all over the pieces then quickly wipe it off. This allows the cream to settle in the grooves between the bricks. Then, (call me obsessive!) I paint the bricks with a toothpick, using three shades of different browns to get the variations of colour.
   The kitset pieces are made of styrene and glue together easily with the quick-drying polycement glue. Then comes the really fun part - landscaping the gardens of the houses and creating the street scenes with vehicles and people.