A colourful welcome

Posted byTrevorPosted inGreat Western Railway in 7mm scale, GWR Bydemill (Highworth), Layouts I have designed or built, Scenery, The Little Details
Someone on the Bydemill station staff has a green thumb…

I am a terrible gardener – in real life. As I write this, there’s a crew digging out the weed patch in our back yard to rebuild it into something my wife and I can maintain.

But I admire a nice garden – and I love the idea that at one time, many stations in the UK (and in Canada) had one along the platform to greet travellers and demonstrate the pride and success of the railway they’d patronized. (I don’t know if it happened in the UK but in Canada, some railways even handed out awards to the station staff for their gardens, encouraging healthy competition.)

So, from the start, I knew I’d plant a garden at Bydemill – my 7mm scale model of a Great Western Railway branch line terminal in the Edwardian era.

I ordered a bunch of supplies, then used the time before they arrived to plan, prep, and install various platform elements – including the fence, the benches, the station sign, and the platform lamps. With supplies in hand, I settled on a general garden design – then broke out the tweezers and glue and started planting.

I used Woodland Scenics ballast to create gravel paths that provide access to maintain the garden – and to wash station sign when it gets too dirty. Woodland Scenics N scale pre-built trees look ridiculously tidy if used as intended, but make great topiary bushes in 7mm.
The garden includes a couple of obelisks, which I swiped from my stash of scenery details for 28mm tabletop skirmish gaming. These came from a set used for historical Japanese games – including my favourite of the genre, Test of Honour.
The benches are white metal and styrene kits from Skytrex. The various plants came from a search for O scale flowers on Amazon and eBay. I used a box of 60 “roses” that came in two colours (30 vines each), which I cut apart and replanted to create large plantings of colour. A dozen packages of flowering plants – four packs in each of three colours – provided the lush beds. The fence is from Slaters.

I’m very pleased with the result. It’s a delightful spray of colour across almost three feet of layout, and a sharp contrast to the dull industrial aesthetic of the goods yard.

I expect the GWR’s vice president in charge of station masters has already shipped my award. No doubt, it will arrive on the evening passenger train…

Published by Trevor

Lifelong model railway enthusiast and retired amateur shepherd who trained a border collie to work sheep. Professional writer and editor, with some podcasting and Internet TV presenting work thrown in for good measure.