The barn and the farm

A while back I posted the dilapidated barn that I built.  It has now been installed on a very small farm on my layout.  The poor farmer that owns the farm had most of his land confiscated when the railroad went through so he sits on his porch and recalls the glory days.  The railroad however, did compensate him so he  actually no longer needs to work.  The farmhouse is a scratchbuild from my late father's Troll & Elfin railroad which I added to my layout for sentimental reasons.  It has been upgraded and modified a bit.  There are a number of animals running loose on the farm including cows, pigs and chickens.  The farmers wife is hanging laundry in the back yard.  She tries to get it dried between passing trains but usually has some soot to deal with.

I am now installing the tannery structures and scenicing around them.

My next industry project will be a dyeworks.  I am doing the research and making sketches.  I will probably post the tannery installation before anything on the dyeworks.  The challenge for me on all of these industries I build is to create some credible model while severely condensing what were usually fairly large industries.  Since I like the variety of industries I need them to be quite small in order to get them all on my layout.  Even though the layout room is about 17' x 25' the space is easily taken up.  Then, on the other hand since I have a very high structure to layout ratio it has been quite time consuming filling up the layout.

It is all fun which is what the hobby is about to me.