Tony’s been in touch with his Book nook diorama – based on Earl’s Court station:

“Hi Alastair –

Here is a write-up about a diorama I recently completed.

A few years ago, my sister asked me to make her a “book nook”. I said sure – then I went to look up what a “book nook” was!

It turned out to be a kind of diorama bookend – right up my alley.

Today there are a lot of book nook kits available, but at the time all the examples I found were scratch built.

Many were of a fantasy nature and there were also a lot of London alleyway scenes. The former didn’t attract me but the latter certainly did.

My thinking quickly evolved into some type of train component. Then it hit me. Years ago, I had purchased a couple of the excellent 00 EFE underground cars. My pie in the sky plan then was to build a model of Paddington Station, including the underground below. That was my 40-year-old thinking. My now 70-year-old brain realized that it will never happen – but here was a chance for a scaled down version.

I searched around for a practical underground station to build and settled on Earl’s Court Station. I wanted to model the mid-1960s and the station today is still the same as it was then. It has an interesting style that I was looking for.

My idea was to model the station above and below and I thought that the build would be fairly simple. It wasn’t. I would actually be building two dioramas and I started with the idea that I could print a photo of the station above- then detail it and I could find a tube of the proper size- probably a plastic pipe- to model the underground part. After a number of starts and stops, I couldn’t get either to work.

For the above ground station, I couldn’t get the detail I wanted. Then one day I was dismantling an old diorama based on a Heljan engine shed and realized that it contained many of the components I needed for a kit-bash (mainly the arched windows). All the components, of course had to be cut and rearranged, and some modified.

For the underground tunnel, I could not find a pipe of the diameter I needed, and I finally settled on a cardboard form for pouring concrete. It was not the exact diameter either, but I could cut the cardboard and adjust the diameter.

In the end, this was the most complicated diorama I have built and it took- off and on- several years. A third part of the build that I started and stopped more than once was the lighting- a very important part of the model- it would need to all light up.

Rather than bore you with any more details, here are photos- somewhat in order- of the build.

Book nook diorama:

A few quick notes.

The lighting needed to be battery powered, as a plug-in on a bookcase would be problematic.

Inexpensive Christmas lights from Walmart turned out to work well, although it was not as easy as I had hoped (nothing was!). Lots of trial and error.

The strings had too many lights (nowhere to hide the extras) and I had to cut them. Certain lengths would work and certain lengths wouldn’t and some splices would work and others wouldn’t – I have no idea why (I have a feeling this group is going to tell me why!).

In the end, I used 2 strings and 2 battery holders (I probably bought 10 strings, somewhat negating the “inexpensive” part!). Stringing them through the different areas was quite a challenge.

The interiors of the bus and tube car are lighted and fully detailed- a lot of work. These are not very visible on the finished product. I enjoyed the process anyway and everyone who details and lights building interiors knows the feeling.

My son Mark had the idea to make the interior of the end shop visible- great idea. He also suggested book cover material for the sides which looks great, but does not show much when installed.

This was overall a difficult project but the results are pretty satisfying. That said- I’d never try it again!

As always- many thanks to Alastair for the amazing job he does for all of us!

Tony”

A huge big thanks to Tony for sharing his book nook diorama (you may remember this one too: Model train diorama.

I have to say, I didn’t know what a book nook was, but now I do, I really want to build one. They look great fun.

Tony’s post reminded me of Rob’s London Underground model train scene.

And also, strangely enough, Matthew’s Thunderbirds Tracey island.

That’s all for today folks. Hope you enjoyed it as much as me.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if there are any stragglers out there, today is the VERY LAST day for the silly sale – 36 printable buildings and the Beginner’s Guide.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

PPS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.

Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the Silly Discount bundle.