Kevin Sweeney

I've done another range of outbuildings to go with the farmhouse, which creates a classic vernacular farmyard layout. I have long wanted to build a barn church, inspired by Patrick's church on the Clogherhead layout. I picked Corrigenrore Church in North Roscommon to base it on. I was able to use Google street view for an all round photo survey of the building. I also have a sentimental attachment to it, as my late wife grew up in that parish and it was her local church. Scale is OO I have simplified the structure further and it now only needs 14 parts to build the basic structure (not including windows) without the roof. It was a bit of an experiment to see if such a simple structure would be strong enough. The end result is quite sturdy

I've done some outbuildings to go with the farmhouse.

Two OO models getting close to a finish. Crossdoney platform shelter and MGW railway cottages.

Thanks Patrick. I'm really enjoying modelling in OO. The storm was good for my modelling as I had a backup power system, which allowed me to keep my PC and printer going, and with communications out there were no interruptions. As the saying goes it's an ill wind that doesn't blow someone good.

Farmhouse is finished. And I have started on Crossdoney platform shelter in OO

My power and communications came back early this afternoon. I was well preped for an event like this, I have a Stanley 8 range for heating and cooking, a rainwater tank for water and a small back up power system, three solar panels, batteries and an invertor. Thanks to my power back up I able to keep my computer and printer working, so the modelling never stopped. Almost as important I was able to keep my e-bike battery charged. Ironically several of my neighbours have big arrays of solar panels on their roof which only feed power to the grid, so they had huge power generation capability but no way to use it. I was at a party on Friday night and cycled home at about 3 am. It was a beautiful starry night and the night sky was amazing to see with no light pollution.

My latest creation, a farmhouse in OO. Not finished yet as I am going to add a shed onto one gable. Also needs ridge tiles and downpipes. I was at the Train and Model fair in Bray on Sunday. A good day out. Good to meet other model makers, I came home with lots of new idea. I sold two models. I will be there next month with 4 different models to sell, including this farm house.

100 euros for the signal cabin and 100 for the cottage. 200 for the station house.

Fear not they are in 4 mm. Even though I normally model in N, when making models to sell I was very aware that 4 mm is the big market in Ireland. If they sell well I will be making more and will be adding more buildings to the range. The plan is to add a MGW goods shed, water tower, engine shed and platform shelter. Once I have those done, I plan to produce the same range of buildings in Great Northern and then in Great Southern. If there is any demand I can also make them in N.

Current state of the Protestant Hall

That's beautiful work Patrick, a wonderful winter scene. I have long been thinking of doing a brick Great Northern Station. I've saved the plan you posted here into my future projects folder.

Front facade of the Protestant Hall is done

I will be at the next fair selling some of my models. I have 3 MGW station houses, 2 MGW signal cabins and a MGW crossing keepers cottage. I will also have a collection of OO track to sell.

After the long campaign required to do the county museum, this one seems easy. I am always attracted to a building that has features I never built before. I like a challenge. It was indeed a beautiful building, we are particularly poor in Cavan at preserving our architectural heritage.

How do you get a stall at the fair, do you just show up on the day or does it have to be booked before hand. I have some OO trackwork and accessories I want to sell.

My next build, Cavan's Protestant Hall. This was until the turn of the century one of the prominent buildings in Cavan Town centre. It belonged to the Anglican diocese of Kilmore, they gifted it to Cavan County Council, who promptly demolished it and built the new county library on the site. This is increasingly my real interest as a model maker, recreating buildings and scenes that are gone.

It took about twice the time that Kilmore Cathedral took to build. Superficially the cathedral looked like a more complex building, but it is one building, the museum has a string of extensions. The cathedral is on a flat site but the museum is on a sloped site. And finally I had the original architects drawings of the cathedral but for the museum I had to work with a photo survey and some screen grabs from drone video I found on Youtube. It took many more hours to do the drawings for the museum, than it did for the cathedral.

Apart from some landscaping the County Museum is done. It took a lot longer to finish than I thought.

Nearly there with the County Museum.

More progress on the County Museum

Making good progress with the County Museum.

There will be an exhibition of my models in Cavan County Museum, in Balljamesduff next April. So I decided to make a model of the County Museum. This building has a series of extensions so I am using card mock ups to work out how it all fits together, another trick I learned from the Chandwell Youtube channel.

After a break I'm back working on my MGW station design. I reduced the number of parts in this stage of the model to 15, not including the windows and doors. My earlier builds had almost 50 parts and was a more complex structure to assemble. If all goes well I intend to sell a finished version of this model for about 200 euros. I had a meeting in Cavan County Museum recently. There will be a week long exhibition of my models in the museum in April, details to be finalised in March. This is my collection of exhibition ready models at the moment. But I planning to have a few more ready for the exhibition, including a model of the County Museum itself.

I was at the exhibition yesterday morning, my first ever model railway show. Big crowd when I was there. On my way in I passed two teenage girls who were leaving the exhibition. One said to the other "that was really cool wasn't it", her friend agreed. It was great to hear, I can't think of any other hobby that is mainly the preserve of middle aged and elderly men, that teenage girls would describe as cool.

I'm very conscious of the level of precision needed for a kit. I've built 3 GW station houses in a row, refining the accuracy of the parts with each build and they are still not good enough. It would take several more builds I think to get them all accurate enough for a kit. I'm leaning towards the idea of selling finished models. I have the build time on the GW station down to 10 hours. This is cutting all parts by hand (my cutting machine died recently), a new cutting machine would take 3 hours off the build time. By simplifying my build process and making small batches of 3 or 4 at a time, i could probably knock another hour off the build time. This would allow me to get a reasonable return on my time and still sell a finished model at a very affordable price.