Dead Meat

Halwill Slaughter House

Railway modellers often add industrial buildings to their layouts, in order to justify some extra freight traffic.  I've seen oil depots, gas works, cattle feed merchants, china clay linhays, milk factories and a paper mill, but never a slaughter house.  Perhaps the subject is too grusome for your average modeller, though I somehow doubt that our ranks include more vegetarians than the rest of society.

With their keen eye for business, the London & South Western Railway built slaughter houses at Halwill, Holsworthy and Bude stations, and I was determined that St Petrock should have one too. As well as the obvious traffic in dead meat for Smithfield, they used to generate traffic in sheepskins, wool and animal fat (for candles), though I don't know how much of this 'extra' traffic survivied into the late 1950's.



I built my model using my favourite method – card, faced with Scalescenes brick paper.   I experimented with printing the window frames on inkjet-friendly acetate, but it didn't really work.  Cream coloured printing came out far too faint, so I reluctantly settled for dark brown.  That'll do for now, but I'll eventually replace them with etched frames from GT Buildings.  That's when I'll also add some drain pipes... and handles on the doors might be useful too!