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Kit: Railway Miniatures – Roter Sand German Lighthouse Scale: 1:87 / HO Ahoy there shipmates! I may have already mentioned, in passing, that I’m going to be attempting to build a lighthouse. My fascination for these sentinels of the shore stems from childhood holidays to Burnham-on-Sea in the 80s and 90s. Because of the high tidal range and shifting sands in the Bristol channel, it had two; the curious Low Lighthouse (the star of many a postcard) that stands on stilts on the beach, and the more conventional High Lighthouse that sits further back on dry land. The Low had been decommissioned in 1969, but was brought back into service in 1993, when the High was sold off and subsequently became a holiday let. Here’s a model of the Low Lighthouse my dad made out of balsa wood: Since I got back into modelling a couple of years ago, a lighthouse build has been an itch I’ve wanted to scratch – particularly a rock 🤘 lighthouse. These towers have an extra mystique; often standing guard beyond the horizon fused to a submerged reef, facing all that Poseidon, Neptune and Michael Fish can throw at them. The research: I can heartily recommend both Seashaken Houses and Rock Lighthouses of Britain. They recount the incredible feats of engineering, bravery and sheer brute force required to construct the towers in the most inhospitable conditions during the 1800s, plus the immense resolve and dedication expected of the men who went on to operate them until automation was introduced in the 80s. For even the most hardiest of keepers, a posting to the notorious Atlantic towers such as Wolf Rock or Bishop Rock could easily turn into incarceration if the seas were too rough for the relief boat; prolonging their tour of duty by weeks if not months. For me, the most spectacular rock 🤘 lighthouse in the British Isles is the one perched on the side of Fastnet Rock, south of County Cork, Ireland: Alas, kits of these magnificent structures are pretty thin on the ground. I turned to our railway modelling brethren because I had vague memories of Faller making a lighthouse. A t’internet search took me to Rails of Sheffield which has an interesting range of laser cut kits from Railway Miniatures. Being HO scale, they’re mostly continental European subjects. Initially I thought I could adapt of the tall tower varieties and mount it on a rock 🤘 base, job done. However, a little bit of research proved that this would be wholly inaccurate, because rock 🤘 lighthouses differ from their landlubbing cousins with a distinctive tapered shape for a lower centre of gravity. And while a shore-based tower would make an interesting subject, they weren’t giving me the gale force 9 salty hit that I was craving for. Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a huge market in railway modelling circles for kits of offshore lighthouses. Giving up premium real estate for scale model oceans isn’t conducive to the running of trains . However, there was one kit in the range that caught my eye: This is Roter Sand lighthouse. It sits 30 miles off Bremerhaven in the German Bight sea area of the Shipping Forecast and doesn’t really count as a rock 🤘 lighthouse because its foundations are built on the sea floor. It’s an unorthodox structure and you could be forgiven for thinking that the architect got a tad carried away by taking his design cues from Neuschwanstein Castle, but the oriels (the turrety thingies bolted to sides) housed additional lights to aid navigation from different angles around this busy stretch of sea. Credit: Markus Jastroch, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons Disappointingly, it was deactivated in 1986 due to shifting sands, the introduction digital navigational aids and the installation of Alte Weser lighthouse (seemingly inspired by Gerry Anderson) further north. It still functions as a daylight beacon and, after a long debate over its future, was restored and became a holiday let: https://www.bookalighthouse.com/rentals/bremerhaven-germany-the-roter-sand-lighthouse-9 So here we go, I’ve not made a card kit since the 90s – and that was a railway goods shed that had lots of nice straight edges and right angles to work with. This, however, has more curves than Dita Von Teese. Also, providing this build doesn’t turn into a right Muckle Flugga, I’d like to mount it on a simple seascape base; maybe sculpting waves out of clay or dabbling in the dark arts of pouring resin. Neither of which I’ve any experience of. What could possibly go wrong? Portland Bob