Populating ‘Lynsford’

It’s probably no surprise that not only do figures play a prominent part on ‘Lynsford’ but that most of them are from the Hardy’s Hobbies range. The benefit of running your own figure manufacturing business is that you and friends can not only be immortalised in model form but that you can have immense fun in dressing up and posing for scans.

In fact, the only non-hardy’s Hobbies figures is a Modelu representation of Andy himself and his West Highland terrier Ted, who sadly died in 2020. Andy’s passion for Westies is reflected in the fact that there are four to be found on the layout, as well as cats.

“There are never enough cats on layouts,” he explains. “At one point seemingly every factory, station and such like had a cat for controlling pests. You don’t often see this modelled but we’ve got five or six cats on the layout including one asleep on the signalman’s chair.”

All the figures were sent to Elliot Ashcroft for painting. “He worked his magic on them,” added Andy, “giving them a level of depth and detail that we couldn’t achieve with a brush ourselves.