DI SONNY RUSSELL'S MINIATURE HOME

DI SONNY RUSSELL'S MINIATURE HOME

Shinglesea - Chelsea Flower Show 2007

I do like to keep a theme going. In 2007 I designed and exhibited a medal winning garden at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show - and met and shook hands with the Queen. But that's another story. As detailed  earlier, I've now used the facade of the railway carriage backdrop as the front of a studio/writing room I've built in the garden.

Studio/writing room

Not content with that, I'm now reproducing it in miniature at a scale of 4mm to the foot or 1/76. It's part of a model railway layout, that I exhibit, called Compass Point. Now, if you've read my DI Sonny Russell crime novels, you'll know that the detective lives, with his little terrier Aggie, in a converted railway carriage, not far from Compass Point. In reality, Compass Point is a thinly disguised Rye Harbour and his carriage home is actually at Winchelsea Beach. Meanwhile, here's a couple of pictures of the progress so far. 

The carriage is a cut-down model of a kit by Ratio and the fencing is made from matchsticks, split lengthwise in four.

WIND extracts from BLOOD ON THE STRAND

WIND

extracts from 

BLOOD ON THE STRAND

James O'Donnell Photography.

Aggie was delighted to be out – the weather didn’t bother her. Heads down, Russell and Weeks were striding into the driving rain while she scampered around their feet, tail up, revelling in the scents she found along the shoreline. The two men said very little to each other. The roaring of the wind and crashing of the surf made conversation close to impossible. The storm showed no sign of abating; if anything it was increasing.

The Shipwrights Arms - Compass Point.

Crossing the railway line he walked along the stony track, past the simple weatherboard structure that served as the station building and up to the Shipwrights Arms. It too was a simple, single-storey structure, but built in local sandstone with a pan-tiled roof, unusual for the area. Sat four square at the end of the quay, hunkered down against the weather, it had withstood gale-force winds, salt spray and lashing rain for more than a century.

After they’d left the shelter of Boulogne Harbour the boat had moved easily to the long swell. But as they’d progressed across the Channel the motion had become less comfortable as the sea became more troubled. The wind had increased with every mile they travelled. Soon it was wailing in the rigging – a discordant keening – a child in the chimney. The craft was sturdy, built to take whatever the weather could throw at it. But even now the timbers groaned and seawater slopped about in the bilge. The two men looked anxiously towards the low shoreline, its featureless contours frequently disappearing in the squally rain.