Model railway

My hobby is my chicken keeping and chicken blog, my husband’s hobby is his model railway. A couple of years ago we doubled the size of the chicken run and at the same time my husband doubled the size of his model railway to fill our back bedroom.

This room had never been used by us as a bedroom and we still have two spare bedrooms for when family come to stay. We feel that as we are heading towards retirement age we both need a hobby.

A few years ago I bought some chickens to be incorporated into the railway scenery. The railway is very much a work in progress with much to be completed which is the point of it really. My husband makes all the model buildings himself from balsa wood. I painted the houses that are on the high street at the back but over time my husband has continued with the painting. As he is colour blind I sometimes offer guidance but I think that his skills have improved immensely.

He makes each building so that it can be lifted out from the set for repair or a closer look or a change of position. He has recently been working on a farm area and built a barn with a chicken coop attached so that the chickens could finally be put into the set. He suggested that I glue the chickens in place in the barn and the strip of grass in front so that they are contained and won’t get knocked as they are so tiny. Some of the chickens are not much bigger than a pin head.

Below is the chicken barn on our dining table after I had placed the chickens on it with tweezers.

Chicken barn

I put some chickens on the hay bales on the right of the barn, it is rather a large flock in a small space but we allow a bit of poetic license.

To put this into context I thought I would take some photos of the railway.

Model railway

At the back is the high street which contains the first buildings my husband made

One of the platforms, with the chicken barn behind the brick wall

A church and some more buildings

A view of most of the railway

The gap in the centre is where my husband works from and the control panel is outside on the right of the photo. This means that while he runs the trains he can view the whole set up.

A few Christmas’s ago my husband made me a chicken coop as a sort of joke gift. He said that I didn’t have to keep it but how could I not? He got the chicken from a toy shop and by luck it just happens to be a brown leghorn. It has the floppy comb and white earlobes of Barley and Peaches.

Chicken coop

I thought that as I am updating on chickens on the railway scenery that this coop deserved a mention too. I thought it was very cute and it lives on top of a cabinet on the landing which leads to the railway room, as we call it.

This is a summary of my husband’s hobby which is forever evolving, much like the chicken run really.