N Scale Ballywillan, Co Longford.

[Kevin Sweeney]

The Courthouse is finished.

[Tullygrainey]

Just fabulous!

[derek]

That roof is mind blowing. Fantastic as usual, Kevin

[popeye]

Stunning, when can I move in 

[Patrick Davey]

You are hereby sentenced to creating more of these!

[Kevin Sweeney]

Some photos from the opening of my exhibition in the County Museum on Saturday. I sold two models.

[Kevin Sweeney]

A quick, simple project, started this morning and just finished. The Abbeyland Tower in Cavan Town is an iconic Cavan structure. It was the belfry of medieval Cavan abbey, and is the sole surviving fragment of medieval Cavan town.

 

[Patrick Davey]

Nice prototype Kevin! Lovely model too of course!

[Kevin Sweeney]

Another iconic Cavan building, Killykeen Cottage built in 1819 by Lady Farnham, on the shore of Lough Oughter. Anyone who has visited Killykeen Forest Park will recognise it.

[derek]

5 hours ago, Kevin Sweeney said:

Another iconic Cavan building, Killykeen Cottage built in 1819 by Lady Farnham, on the shore of Lough Oughter. Anyone who has visited Killykeen Forest Park will recognise it.

Lovely model Kevin. Especially like the camber on the hips of the roof

[Mol_PMB]

Superb work as ever! I keep forgetting how small these all are in N gauge, yet the character and detail is captured perfectly.

[Kevin Sweeney]

Conjectural model of medieval Cavan Abbey, based on a late 1500s map of Cavan Town. The tower I posted on May 7th is all that remains of the abbey. This model will be joining my other models on display in the County Museum, until November 1st.

 

I'm hunting for a commission from a glamping site, so I've made a glamping pod as a sample.

I also have a new website, which is still a work in progress but is now live at breffnimodels.ie 

Edited May 21, 2025 by Kevin Sweeney

[Patrick Davey]

More amazing work Kevin - love the contrast in the glamping pod!

Great website too - best of luck with it all.

[Kevin Sweeney]

I've taken a break from making models until September, but I'm doing a lot of research on our architectural heritage. I have come across many sad cases of beautiful buildings abandoned and allowed to crumble, and others modified beyond recognition. This one pictured take the prize for least sensitive reuse of a historically important building, I've come across so far. Built in the 1820s, this is the gate lodge of Baronstown House, Co Westmeath, converted into a very grand cow house. It's so awful and ugly I'm nearly tempted to make a model of it.

[Kevin Sweeney]

After my summer break, the new model making season has begun. I spent the last few months doing a lot of research into Irish architectural  heritage. My plan for this season is to work on another exhibition, which I hope to have ready by April. The working title is "The Irish House", so a range of buildings from a ring fort, to a modern mansion.

My first build of the season is Ormond Castle in Carrick on Suir. A unique Irish building, the only Tudor manor house ever built in Ireland. Dating from the 1560s, it says something about the power and confidence of the Butlers of Ormond, that they built an unfortified manor house at a time when every body else was still building castles and forts.

It's been as tricky model to build so far. The main part left to build is the ruined tower at the rear, which will be a new model making challenge for me.

Also planned for this modelling season, is to get a double loop of track and some sidings laid, and get some trains running. I have a base board done so it would not take a lot of work to get trains running. The problem as always is getting distracted by buildings.

[Patrick Davey]

Mighty Kevin!  Great to see you back at the buildings again.  I love how you never shy away from a challenging prototype!

[Kevin Sweeney]

3 hours ago, Patrick Davey said:

Mighty Kevin!  Great to see you back at the buildings again.  I love how you never shy away from a challenging prototype!

As master modeller Kathy Millat once said if your not making mistakes your not learning. I like to keep pushing the limits in all aspects of life, you only live once.

[Kevin Sweeney]

Almost there with Ormond Castle. Two chimney caps and ground cover on the base board and it's done. The real thing has the ruins of the original medieval castle behind it but I'm not modelling that.

My next build will be Myrtle Grove in Youghal. Also a Tudor house, dating from the 1550s. Its most famous resident was Walter Raleigh who lived there from 1588 to 1589. Legend has it that the first potatoes in Ireland were planted in the garden. It is privately owned and still a family home. A remarkable survivor, 475 years old and still standing.

[Kevin Sweeney]

Making good progress with Myrtle Grove.

Have also started work on King House in Boyle. I started with a card mock-up, and have now completed all the windows and the carcass for the main block.

Also have two models I made last June, one of a thatched cottage and the other a modern house. I have four models complete and one close to complete for my next exhibition. 

[Flying Snail]

These are all really impressive ... but it's the little cottage that caught my eye, I really like the thatched roof!

[Kevin Sweeney]

44 minutes ago, Flying Snail said:

These are all really impressive ... but it's the little cottage that caught my eye, I really like the thatched roof!

The thatched roof is cotton wool impregnated with PVA and acrylic paint, and pressed  between two panes of glass. It works well at 2 mm scale, but I'm not sure how it would look in 4 mm scale.

Edited September 29, 2025 by Kevin Sweeney

[Kevin Sweeney]

Making good progress with King House. It's interesting to compare its size to Ormond Castle, they were built 170 years apart. In that time the housing aspirations of the Irish aristocracy had certainly grown. And King House is a modest building compared to something like Castletown, in Kildare. Ironic that all of this opulence was being funded by the labour of little people who lived in thatched cottages and mud walled hovels.

Model making is like any other craft, the more you do it the easier it gets. I had no plans for this building. It's all based on a photo survey, the OS maps (to get the footprint), and some drone footage I found on Youtube. A few years back it would have taken me maybe a week just to do the drawings, I got them done in a day.

[Kevin Sweeney]

Making progress with King House, but got diverted twice in the last month, which has slowed it down. First I fell off my bicycle and hurt my hand which stopped all work for two weeks.

I also got distracted when I found the website Lego Castles by Bob Carney and decided to have a go at making a castle. I'm almost finished making Fiddaun Castle which is south of Gort. If anyone fancies having a go at modelling a castle the websites has plans and drawings of 17 different Irish castles. I'm toying with the idea of building Bunratty Castle in OO scale. It would make a big impressive model in the that scale.

[Mol_PMB]

Stunning work! Good to hear that you're mended and modelling again. I thought I was going to see a photo of a Lego castle but you've gone a lot better than that. The Lego Castles page looks great though - Cahir is a very impressive model.

Bunratty Castle was an annual visit for me as a child, and always a super day out. I have many fond memories of the place, not just the castle itself but the village. There was another historical site in that neck of the woods with much older (bronze age / iron age?) settlements recreated, one of which had an escape tunnel 'the souterrain' which to an 8-year-old me was the third* most exciting thing in Ireland.

* The top two were (2) Bunratty Castle, and (1) a train trip from Ennis.

 

[Kevin Sweeney]

2 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

Stunning work! Good to hear that you're mended and modelling again. I thought I was going to see a photo of a Lego castle but you've gone a lot better than that. The Lego Castles page looks great though - Cahir is a very impressive model.

Bunratty Castle was an annual visit for me as a child, and always a super day out. I have many fond memories of the place, not just the castle itself but the village. There was another historical site in that neck of the woods with much older (bronze age / iron age?) settlements recreated, one of which had an escape tunnel 'the souterrain' which to an 8-year-old me was the third* most exciting thing in Ireland.

* The top two were (2) Bunratty Castle, and (1) a train trip from Ennis.

 

I was really impressed with the lego castles.

It's been many years since I was at Bunratty Castle, I might just take a trip down there and do a photo survey. I was looking at the possibility of getting Irish medieval figurines which seem to be available in 1 72 scale. So that might be the scale to do it in. It would look good with some soldiers on the battlements.

[derek]

On 10/11/2025 at 6:46 PM, Kevin Sweeney said:

I was really impressed with the lego castles.

It's been many years since I was at Bunratty Castle, I might just take a trip down there and do a photo survey. I was looking at the possibility of getting Irish medieval figurines which seem to be available in 1 72 scale. So that might be the scale to do it in. It would look good with some soldiers on the battlements.

Bunratty  gives me horrible flashbacks. As a first year apprentice, I had to do a months work experience with the builders building the village above the castle. Worked in a cold damp shed/workshop with the crankiest ba****d of a joiner ever to walk this earth. To this day, the smell of oak gives me the creeps and brings me right back there.

[Kevin Sweeney]

I got distracted from modelling for the last 6 weeks, I've been investing a lot of my time trying to learn to speak Irish. But I'm getting back to model making again.

I've nearly finished a model of Galgorm Castle, just outside Ballymena, which is a beautiful Jacobean house. Built in 1618. A rare survivor from that period.

 

[Patrick Davey]

Wow great to see you back Kevin, fáilte romhat!

That is a seriously excellent model, geographically quite distant from your earlier amazing work!

Great stuff.

 

[Kevin Sweeney]

Go raibh maith agat, a Phádraig. It is a wonderful building. The moment I saw a photo of it, I knew I had to make it.

[Georgeconna]

exquisite buildings Kevin.

Are these exteriors photographed and then laid out over card?

[leslie10646]

8 hours ago, Kevin Sweeney said:

I got distracted from modelling for the last 6 weeks, I've been investing a lot of my time trying to learn to speak Irish. But I'm getting back to model making again.

I've nearly finished a model of Galgorm Castle, just outside Ballymena, which is a beautiful Jacobean house. Built in 1618. A rare survivor from that period.

 

Bearing in mind the prototype, Kevin, I thought it was for @Patrick Davey's next Co Antrim layout ........

A very nice model, well done.

[Kevin Sweeney]

1 hour ago, Georgeconna said:

exquisite buildings Kevin.

Are these exteriors photographed and then laid out over card?

The stone texture sheet is generated from a photo. I got the footprint from the OS map and the basic structure from drone footage I found on youtube. I drew the building in Inkscape, the free drawing app, printed out the card parts and cut them by hand, applied the cover sheets and assembled them. The slates are from Scalesenes.

33 minutes ago, leslie10646 said:

Bearing in mind the prototype, Kevin, I thought it was for @Patrick Davey's next Co Antrim layout ........

A very nice model, well done.

It would fit in nicely on a Co Antrim layout.

[derek]

10 hours ago, Kevin Sweeney said:

I got distracted from modelling for the last 6 weeks, I've been investing a lot of my time trying to learn to speak Irish. But I'm getting back to model making again.

I've nearly finished a model of Galgorm Castle, just outside Ballymena, which is a beautiful Jacobean house. Built in 1618. A rare survivor from that period.

 

What a beautiful building, Kevin. Talk about symmetry! And brilliantly crafted by you.  Again

[Kevin Sweeney]

I'm working on a commission for a customer, of a 7 bay OO model based on the engine shed in Connolly Station, this is the plan I've come up with. A full model of the Connolly shed including all 18 bays would be 1008 mm long in OO, so this is a compressed version to fit on the customers layout. The model will have open loco doors and be used to store locos. I've never built such a big model without an internal skeleton before, so I'm going to use 4 layers of 2 mm greyboard for the walls. I usually build walls with 2 layers of 1 mm greyboard and an internal skeleton. The walls of this model will be 8 mm thick, which should give a strong structure.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Kevin Sweeney

[Flying Snail]

9 minutes ago, Kevin Sweeney said:

I'm working on a commission for a customer, of a 7 bay OO model based on the engine shed in Connolly Station, this is the plan I've come up with. A full model of the Connolly shed including all 18 bays would be 1008 mm long in OO, so this is a compressed version to fit on the customers layout. The model will have open loco doors and be used to store locos. I've never built such a big model without an internal skeleton before, so I'm going to use 4 layers of 2 mm greyboard for the walls. I usually build walls with 2 layers of 1 mm greyboard and an internal skeleton. The walls of this model will be 8 mm thick, which should give a strong structure.

 

Looking forward to seeing this one. There'll be a lot of people on here very interested in how it turns out!