Build a centrepiece

An Englishman’s home is his castle, and so is the centrepiece for Peter Marriott’s layout…

Peter Marriott demonstrates how you can build a centrepiece castle.

We all know what grand structure we want to form the centrepiece of our layout. It could be something like a big station, an industrial complex or simply a row of terraced houses. But having an idea and then actually building it are two different things – just ask Chris Leigh about his giant timber trestle viaduct!

Centrepieces can be big or complex and require a lot of planning before you can start to build. But with time on your hands, now is the perfect opportunity to build something meaningful that will take your project to another level.

I needed a castle that bore some resemblance to Bodiam Castle as the centrepiece for my layout in MR272, but castles are not the easiest of things to model. Bodiam has that classic castle shape, with towers in each corner and imposing stone walls. I could have used toilet roll centres for the towers but you really need embossed sheet to capture the look of the huge stones from which castles were built,

and embossed sheet isn’t easy to roll around a toilet roll.

Admitting that this wasn’t going to be a scale model would help, since Noch makes a ruined castle diorama out of hard foam. That would give me a tower that looked as though it was made of stone. But the hard foam material is so easy to work with that it’s ideal for kit-bashing. Noch also makes other items from the same hard foam, including stone retaining walls. This was perfect for turning Noch’s ruined castle into something more like Bodiam.