One of my pet hates on model railways are buildings that float a fraction above the ground because they have been plonked in situ, not bedded in.  For me, it completely destroys the illusion and I can get quite wound up about it when I see it (…..and it is pretty common, so this is fairly often!).

Occasionally, I actually do attach the building to the baseboard and “scenic in” the ground around them but more normally I construct a base into which the building sits.  This gets embedded permanently and then the building sits into a slot that is formed into it.  I have also seen the building being built in two parts, with the base being affixed to the ground and the building slotted onto them.  Peter Bond did this for me with the signal cabins for Portchullin.  This is the base for the larger water tank:

The large water tank is more prominent as it is located closer to the baseboard edge and is to the rear of the main focus of the MPD area, the trackwork between the shed and the turntable.  It is also adjacent to the coaling bank and as a result I decided to make this now and as part of the base for the water tank.

The smaller of the water tanks is designed to mask a baseboard joint in a rockface/embankment.  The base (below) will thus be split into two halves when it is fitted, each sitting on adjacent boards – a neat way of not having the San Andreas fault line running through a rock face!

I have also started the painting of these, which had a fairly characteristic design with the border in a red/brown and a cream central panel.  It is important to recreate this and as it is fairly eye catching, errors will be instantly visible.

The straight edges weren’t too difficult to achieve with masking tape; initially the horizontals and then the verticals a day later.  Peeling back the masking tape was a thrill to see if it worked!

The scrolls at the corner was a concern throughout the construction of the water tanks but I did hit on an idea I think is rather nifty.  I sprayed the same red/brown on some transfer paper (thanks Chris!) and once it was dry, used a domestic hole punch to create disks of transfer.  I then cut them into segments that were a bit bigger than a quarter of the disk.  They were then applied as a transfer to each corner.

Actually, it was pretty easy once I got going – I definitely spent longer thinking about it than I did doing it!  I am pretty pleased with the outcome, much neater than my hand could manage!

The rather prominent hole in the coal bank will be the subject of a future post, as there is something a bit different planned for this!