A general view of the front of the model. Trains exit into the fiddle yard around the hidden corner to the far right. This means there is no visible end to the diorama making the illusion more convincing. Hopefully I will find a way of avoiding the need for the corner support eventually. Lighting is a mixture of fluorescent tube and halogen spots. I still need to add in a number of daylight bulbs to balance the colouring. The inside of the pelmet will need painting sky blue as this makes a very big difference to the colour of the reflected light. There is no back scene as yet and the aim is for this to be a single seamless curved board. Visiting the York show over Easter highlighted how many good layouts are ruined by poor lighting and scruffy presentation so this aspect of the model needs to look really professional.
The expended foam was attacked with a razor saw and surform to create the fore shore.
The fore shore was then covered with papier mache. The jetty at the front is one of the few additions to the landscape other than the railway. The layout will grow to the left eventually, with the line climbing to meet the path to the beach.
There is a lot to resolve in getting the levels right at this end of the fishermen's houses. There are complex rock formations which need to be incorporated into the imagined railway trackbed. This muddy area with all its seaweed is potentially one of the most complicated surfaces to model convincingly.
The seafront has large rock armour put in during the last decade. Prior to this, the sea front had slate sea defences; slates cemented end on to create a kind of cobbled surface.
I had decided to make the sea floor drop away steeper than in reality to suggest that larger vessels could tie up at the jetty. I am torn as to whether this looks right. There are a couple of good overall shots of this area from the 1920s and 30s available in the Francis Frith collection
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