Garden Railway Forum

Elderbury has now acquired the Station Hotel to complete the disguising of the wooden summerhouse behind the station.

Very nice

That's an absolute beauty, particularly from the first photo angle, it looks authentic!
The old 'AA' sign is a nice touch too.

Peter Butler:103671 wrote:That's an absolute beauty, particularly from the first photo angle, it looks authentic!
The old 'AA' sign is a nice touch too.

Thanks Peter.
The building itself actually is authentic, in the sense that I had full architectural survey drawings for a real "Station Hotel" in a light grey stone, to work from. I added the cobbles, seats, lights and AA Hotel sign but the building itself, including the single storey section behind the tree, are exactly as survey.

Very impressive and neat. Must ask how the sign writing was acheived.

Mr. Bond of the DVLR:103676 wrote:Very impressive and neat. Must ask how the sign writing was acheived.

I wish I could claim it was hand done, but I have to admit that it is by the magic of a laser printer!

We have an inkjet printer which we use for everyday stuff, but the inks are water soluble and even with gallons of varnish the original lettering on the post office signs ran in the rain, and it looked awful after about 6 months.

I scoured the dreaded fleabay and found an HP network laser printer with unknown quantities of toner and possible faults, for 10 squid. I thought it was reasonable gamble for a tenner and it turned out to work fine except that the  black is out of register with everything else by  about 3 or 4mm, which is a bit of a  pain, but by careful selection of colours it can be worked around. Laser lettering is a thermosetting plasticy material which is fused into the paper and doesn't run when it gets wet, so I hope that with liberal application of varnish to protect the paper, this might last a bit better.

So, the hotel sign itself is simply printed black on white. The AA sign was a bit more complicated because the black and yellow are out of register, as I said. In the end I printed it in black on white paper and then soaked the whole thing in dilute yellow Humbrol paint, which because its dilute doesn't show on top of the black. Two layers back to back, for both faces of the sign, gave enough colour depth to the yellow, to give the result shown.

A tidy bit of low relief moelling. Foamboard?

bazzer42:103691 wrote:A tidy bit of low relief moelling. Foamboard?

Yep.
Well actually it was the foam they sell as insulation for under laminate flooring. It's a bit crumblier than the stuff I've used before but it is available in bigger sheets. Have to wait and see how it lasts.