fifteen minute modeller

fighting procrastination fifteen minutes at a time

Category: Misc (Page 1 of 3)

The future got 10 shades Brighter

6th December 2020 / / 0 Comments
#123 Acrylic Paints

So on the first after lockdown, I needed to pick up some paint. So a trip to our local “big town” was needed. Oh my, you wouldn’t think there was a global pandemic on, added in with that, Chrimbo frenzy that was really starting to get into the swing of things. But thankfully the art supplies shop was a bit of a haven away from all that. I’d forgotten what it was like to be in an art shop with all the different pencils paints paper et cetera. I could spend a happy few hours in there just perusing the racks of inspiration.

Looking for the acrylic paints that were tucked away on the shelf down near the floor, I came across an exactly right set. It had the necessary black and white in and a good mixture of others too.

By now the shop had another person had come in so I decided to pay for the paints and leave. To my surprise, a small queue had formed outside the shop and I don’t think it had seen such patronage. The fact that this little shop still exists and is stocked in every nook and cranny brings joy. I had a faint whiff of nostalgia, where all shopping were like this, and not the out of town centres of consumerism that we have grown to accept. Before I go on a melancholic ramble on how good things used to be I must remind myself that we didn’t have the wonders of the internet to provide us, modellers, with so much easy information at our fingertips or resulting friendships that have grown out of this wondrous medium.

Now bear in mind the last time I bought paint was probably when I was in my teens, and that was somewhat hazy as to whether they were for myself or as a gift for a relative. I was really unsure about what I was going to need. However, there is nothing that one can’t find out without a few moments of noodling on Google and a brief interrogation by the assistant.

Now come to there use. Obviously, there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube on how to paint with acrylics, but I will mainly be using them on card for architectural models. But as I have said before, I want to at some point go all Bob Ross and try a back scene, even if it is by numbers. But that will be a whole other story.

So now I will leave you with my ponderings of how to recreate Stone 1, Stone 2 and Chocolate Brown.

Until the next one..

Transport Fever 2 – For Mac

2nd December 2020 / / 0 Comments
Transport Fever 2
#122 Transport Fever 2

I recently came across the game of Transport Fever 2 and was piqued at the level of detail and game play. The game in question I came across on YouTube was based on a Swiss map, so how could I not like it! Now added into that I found out that the developers are bringing it to the Mac platform and suddenly my indifference to the recent announcements from Cupertino needed to be reevaluated. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to rush out and blow a grand on a new Apple but if my current 2011 dinosaur of a MacBook would run it I am definitely in.

Looking at the new M1 macs, and by the reviews they have been getting they would certainly be up to the task. However I am very much an iPad convert now and wouldn’t give up my pencil for anything. I know there’s a plan to be able to run apps from each platform on either but the reality is usually much different from than the promise.

But watching the trains trundling around the lakes and mountain passes made me think about commanding my own state owned railway in Helvetia..

HGem2/2 Loco
TPC HGem2/2

Swiss HGem2/2 locos – Swiss small scale shunter

7th November 2018 / / 0 Comments

“Swiss small scale locos HGem2/2”. Yet another rabbit hole to disappear down into, that’s what I muttered to my self as I came across yet another Flickr library whilst looking for something else! You may ask why this and not say a whole range of other locos, but something just grabbed me about its simplicity and strange beauty. Yes it’s not going to be everyones cup of tea and I have had the same feeling about many of the modern freight locomotives introduced into this country in the last decade. But one of the factors that draws me in is the notion that this would not be “too” difficult to reproduce in model form. Well that’s what I have in my head, along with a bunch of 3D printer reviews and photo-etching blog posts.

The bonus to this particular Swiss loco is that I have found some rather comprehensive dimensional drawings. Which is usually the hardest things to come by. With a wheelbase of 4250mm it would seem to me that it might fit on one of the Kato motorised chassis 11-103, just. And unless I have monetised it in a previous cull I have a feeling that there is one in the bits box that I got in Porthmadog many years ago.

It would seem that the builders definitely followed the KISS mantra for this design and I am guessing that the operations for these Swiss made HGem2/2’s are relatively light weight and seem to be used purely for MOW duties, although I maybe completely wrong. There are a few shots of multiple locos lined up due for delivery to other lines and so they are not exclusively built for TPC.

Finally some pics of the loco in the wild with the TPC and some pondering about construction.

https://hiveminer.com/User/ChristopheBerthoud/Recent

HGem2/2 Loco TPC HGem2/2

Until next time..

Model Rail Radio
Model Rail Radio

Podcast promote

5th October 2018 / / 1 Comment
Model Rail Radio
Model Rail Radio

 

I have way too many podcasts But back in the beginning of my podcast listening journey, one Christmas I was with family and tired of endless turkey sandwiches and the usual sibling rivalries the thought crossed my mind where there any podcasts for railway modellers? Continue reading

Inaugural.

2nd September 2018 / / 0 Comments

This is a bit of a red letter day for me for a couple of reasons; firstly I received my first Kato N Ge4/4II through the post, yes I know it’s been out for sometime but I have been saving up for this one. And secondly I have uploaded my first video for 15minutemodeller.

This may not seem much but it’s a bit of a step for me. I’m really not sure where this is going but thought it would be good to add another dimension to the blog. However this short clip has had me faffing around all day with it and I have a lot of admiration for anyone in video editing. I have not studied film making and besides knowing what a jump cut is that’s about as far as my knowledge goes. When you see the kit lists of some youtubers it’s enough to make anyone flinch at what must be the GDP of a small country to buy this level of expertise. I on the other hand have bluffed m way through with nothing but my battered iPhone 5S. Thankfully I have cut out the cacophony of the washing machine in on spin cycle, nearby neighbours discussing whether it will rain and the rather in my mind realistic grinding from the loco. This was/is just a test really and I guess I could have put a load more effort into filming the loco but as a late starter to the game I just wanted to get something out. Of course once you have finished a million and one ideas come to your head abut how you could have done better but I guess the art is to know when to give up. Besides the content is not exactly riveting even with a couple of card knock ups.

So will there be more? Maybe.. I really need to be building something to make it more interesting and as the current progress has only got as far as erecting a bunch of IKEA PAX wardrobes I am struggling to find the time to get my projects on the go again. However there is a lot in the pipeline, not least the brown envelope that thumped on the mat the other day but I’ll have to come back to that later. But doing all this video stuff takes time and I kind of see it as progressing my hobby, although in a round about kinda way and takes way more than fifteen minutes!

And finally to the object of the inaugural video, the rather lovely N Scale Kato Ge4. Until I got it out of its box I had only seen pics on the interwebs and I was a but concerned with the level of detail particularly around the roof area. It is however much better than expected and looking at it closely they have managed to get a good level of detail in the exhaust vents. The windows are a bit on the thick side but are acceptable to me and the undercarriage also passes. I am not looking for finescale fidelity on this loco but want it to look the part which it most certainly does. The decals are crisp in there printing and as you would expect from Kato the running quality is very smooth even on my undulating test track. All in all I am very please with this addition to the roster and now need some coaching stock to run behind it once I get the layout intended for it built. It also needs chipping at some point to bring it in line with the Ge4/4IIIs but I’ll do this nearer the time I need to start testing stock patterns and finalise what DCC system I am going to stick with.

It goes without say that these lovely locos would look perfect if towing some freight stock behind it, maybe some iconic cement wagons or one of my favourites Fads but I’m sure in the fullness of time we will get something to broaden operational fun apart from watching endless glacier expresses hum by.

Until next time..

P.S. at the time of posting I am unable to see why my vid is not available on YouTube but I will make another post once it is up and viewable if even only to have a bit of s chortle at it..

New local hobby shop

9th August 2018 / / 0 Comments

Card kit, glue and paint

A friend alerted me to a new hobby store in a town not too far from me where I volunteer for one day a week so I thought I would take the opportunity to pop in and see what they had and give some support to bricks and mortar businesses. As we know in this day and age of the internet we can get just about anything we want at the click of a button which has not helped the traditional hobby stores.

I knew that they provided for a number of hobbies so wasn’t sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised at the support for railways. I believe most of there business is done online but it’s location should encourage hobbyists to visit. I had a brief look round as my lunch break was tight but left with the above items at a very reasonable price, the kit brought on a bit of a whim but have a plan what to do with it!

So this weeks public service announcement is support you local shops if you can. Popping in for some glue or paints is not so easy online and you also don’t get tempted by other things.

The model shop visited was

Veteranus Models

Until next time..

Digital dismantle

26th June 2018 / / 0 Comments

Laptop dismantle Although not strictly a modelling post it is some what linked. Things have been somewhat hectic at 15minute towers this week and also summer has arrived with a bit of a kick with temps in the high twenties and thirties yesterday which as dampened the enthusiasm to sit at my workbench.

From the picture you can see a dismantled laptop I was given in perfectly good working order as the owner had decided to upgrade to a newer much lighter one. One of their criticisms was also that it is very noisy due to the fans always being on. Looking around YouTube I came across a number of videos of people who had converted laptops into silent desktop machines and thought I’d like to have a go at that.

Why you might ask would I want to go to all that trouble to convert a perfectly good working pc into a pile of bits? Well neither do I want a loud machine and also I prefer the desktop format over the now more common place laptop form factor, in order to be able to manipulate it into a comfortable mode of operation.

So the trick will be to be able to find out how I can run it at a suitable temperature that won’t burn out the processor the minute I turn it on. It’s not at all scientific but slapping a huge lump of extruded aluminium on to the hot bits will hopefully dissipate enough heat to let me get a bit of use out of it. I just need to find a stockist locally of such an item that’s not going to cost more than buying a new one.

And now the tenuous link to modelling. I have a couple of uses for it the main one being to use it for Blender rendering as an additional processor to my rather ageing every day laptop. Although I don’t model huge scenes or models it will be good to cut the time spent waiting for the render to finish. And finally I could run a train sim on it although you may say any spare time should be real world modelling but there will be some times it is a relaxing pass time away from all other worldly distractions.

This is likely going to take me some time to complete so don’t hold your breath for too long as I have way more important projects to be working on!

Until next time..

5RJF5Y: 50 Railways for 50 Years

23rd October 2014 / / 0 Comments

Some time ago, well earlier this year I was sorting through a number of family and personal pictures that had been in storage and only started going trough when I had got round to sorting through the boxes, however one of the items I came across was a photo from a holiday I took way back with a mate of mine where we inter-railed round Europe with a small budget, a big rucksack and a winning smile. That was one of holidays that you never forget and brought many happy memories back and I should really right something down at some point for future family members maybe.

Anyway this lead me on to an idea that kept coming back and from it’s initial inception in my usual fashion it ricocheted from the kernel of the idea to a galaxy consuming juggernaut. So to the meat of this post, next year I will turn 50 and that is something I never thought I would make it to when I was in my late teens and into my twenties due to a rather reckless attitude and a succession of ever increasingly powerful motorbikes. However here I am or soon to be 50 and I thought that I should really do something to commemorate this rather amazing achievement, well somewhat amazing, ok pretty mundane to most. Being a railway modeller and having a Life long interest in trains I thought what better way to celebrate than to visit railways in anyway shape or form a kind of pilgrimage. Not quite a bucket list but one that would be a dream list with a number of prototypes that I have wanted to see over the course of time. Where do you start with a project like this, well the obvious one is here in the UK as there is an abundance of heritage railways and many related subjects, however I wasn’t going to limit myself by this and I have a number of locations, things I want to see that are further afield.

This takes some considerable planning and not an insignificant amount of money. Well where do I start? So I am looking at doing things I haven’t done before but this is not a complete blanket rule and I am going to be realistic and have a plan B if my original intentions are unable to be carried out probably due to financial reasons. But 50 railways in a year equates to one every weekend, now this is just impossible obviously. However it is possible to do a number of activities at one go and this is where my starting point will be. So getting out the atlas and looking to stick pins in I thought of what are the prizes of this journey and for me they are the journey rather than the place and it is on the journey that one has the adventures. In fact the more I think about it the more it seems to be about the experience than purely ticking off a list of a bunch of things on a crumpled piece of paper that had been reworked and worn out by endless possibilities that came and went. Remembering back to the InterRail holiday it wasn’t the journey that was the important thing it was the experience around it and the people and places visited, the international football match in Innsbruck where no one spoke very much English, the night at Lake Constance(Bodensee) with a monster that my friend was shouting at and hitting with a shoe (no really) to try and give the rest of the dorm some sleep who in the morning awoke and greeted us with a cheery Guten Morgen oblivious to the previous nights interruptions, to the Machine Gun totting Italian border guards, to the most memorable couple of days in Strasbourg; 1ltr bottles of Kronenbourg, Philadelphia Phil, Bones Jones and Birgit the bouncy barmaid, the stories go on and I guess in some way it would nice to recreate some of these experiences some what later in life.

Moving along I have jotted down some of the ideas and places I want to visit and in no particular order they are  or would be; Seven Valley Railway, Ravenglass & Eskdale, Great Central, WHR, Talyllyn, then on into Europe with Swiss Metre lines including RhB, BVB, WAB, MOB, ZB and many others also the rather unique 750mm Waldenburgbahn. In Germany the Harz Railway, travel the ICE would be on the list and then a rather longer hop to over the over side of the pond to visit the railways of New England and Canada. As I have never really been a fan of the desert railways but never say never. I would particularly like to see some short-line railroading and would love to ride the Amtrak somewhere for the experience. Now that the idea is out there I guess I need to actually do something about it!

I plan to do it during the year of my birthday so will be April to April to give me some time to organise, plan and try and finance! and progress will be posted here sporadically as there is some. Would love to hear any feedback..

Over the hills

17th October 2014 / / 0 Comments

Due to the on going man cold I have shied away from getting tools both hand and power tools out today as head colds and tools don’t make for a good recipe. So in order to keep the flow going and to keep the mojo moving on I set out to find my Canon PIXMA IP4000 printer that has been through a number of moves and stayed in storage for a while. Not being confident that it would a) start up and b) print I was pleasantly surprised to find it did both, in a fashion. It took 3 power ups and once on advised me that virtually all the ink tanks were empty or faulty so no surprise there and was surprised that it even got that far I was thinking that I would have to buy a new printer completely. I am as every waiting so waiting for some ink will be no biggy and looking forward to doing some structure modelling having seen the efforts I made over 30 years ago..

I have been enthralled with pics mainly on Facebook from tram systems across Europe and the ones I am interested in are the Swiss metre gauge but I have been admiring the heritage systems. But it has lead to thoughts of Swiss Alps mountain village halt and buildings close together. In fact I think I can transpose this scenario into many different locations and scales. But thats of the future!!

So if this is working you can see some of my inspirations

« Older posts

© 2025 fifteen minute modeller

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑