A prominent landmark in Kings Cross GY was the roundhouse, originally made for the Midland Railway. This was demolished in 1931, but it has always been in the plan to include it on the layout.

It would sit behind the ‘elbow’ on York Way where there is quite an awkward patch of ground.

There was never going to be enough room to model it ‘in the round’ and simply painting it onto the back scene would have been challenging. So I made a rough placeholder out of card, approximately painted to see if a silhouette structure would work.

The effect was quite encouraging, but the colour saturation was too strong and the perspective would need to be worked out very carefully. A new card silhouette was made that was designed to be both semi-curved, but also painted to represent the cylinders, cones and frusta of this complicated building. Once painted it was fixed to a plywood former, giving a rather alarming shape when viewed from the wrong aspect.

The painting is a bit impressionist in style but the shadowing is correct for our lighting. The ground will need to be made up around the sides of the building where the painted perspective kicks in.

When viewed side on, the effect is quite distressing.

From normal viewing distances the round house merges quite nicely into the haze. There will probably now be scope for representing Top Shed between the roundhouse and the saw tooth roofs of the St Pancras Goods Station, next to the NLR incline.

Quite a fun days work.