fifteen minute modeller

fighting procrastination fifteen minutes at a time

Tag: kato

Move to the left, move to the right

9th September 2018 / / 4 Comments

As the picture shows life is somewhat frenetic at the moment and although this looks like a complete mess it really is. Why post a picture then? Well not only is it a snapshot of time but also a rather graphic reminder to “Get things done!” I really struggle with all this time management malarky and seemingly to some I have all the time in the world but it never pans out that way in this little corner of the world. Search the internet and there is noooo shortage of gurus and experts telling you how to maximise ones time, get up at 3am and do your best work and a whole host of other mantras that breed success in life, but as you can see I am struggling to fight my way out of a pile of plastic boxes. Is this a cop-out, where’s the modelling you’ve been promising? Good point! Yes where is it? I look at prolific modellers and wonder how they manage to produce all these wonderful models and layouts…. but there is no secret and ultimately I am not following my own mantra, rather allowing lethargy to rule. In fact this the whole reason why I set up this blog and here I am a number of months in poodle faking my way through the internet lands of railway modelling. There’s always an excuse, family came to stay, hard day volunteering, didn’t have the right stuff to start or finish a project and so on.

However on a positive note writing about this inactivity consistently it is helping me be consistent about at least one thing. One can skip reading this but the act of sitting down once a week and typing away is some kind of discipline that is needed to carry forward any project. With on average 25 views a week and quite frankly I’m staggered that there are that many people visiting my record of inactivity it is however really about keeping momentum going in the face lethargy and hopefully inspire others suffering mojo motivation to consider giving a small bit of time a week to their modelling.

As the weather slowly starts to turn over into autumn and the nights start drawing in and the modelling season really gets into full swing there should be no excuses for me not making progress. I really need to start practicing what I preach.

With that in mind I am going to carry out an experiment of writing one post per day for a week to see if I can get the myself doing just 15 minutes a night and see what I can achieve. Putting things off and procrastinating was why I decided to start this and that’s pretty much what I have done since moving to this new house. So many plans on paper and in my head but that’s where there’ll stay unless I can at put aside fifteen minutes. These minutes may be used in different projects as I have quite a few builds to either complete or start for myself and others.

Until next time..

I will leave you with a little mockup

Kato Allegra 3 car unit

Kato RhB ABe 8/12 Allegra 3 Car EMU

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..

Restarting the restart

21st April 2018 / / 2 Comments

Oops, it’s been over two months since my last post and although there’s been no noticeable activity on here there has been progress in the background with some rationalising of the model rail empire in order to make way for new items that are more in line with the direction of my modelling for the moment. With the weather changing for the better now is the time to get outside and do any dirty work needed. I will be posting about that nearer the time I start out as I have a load of work to do on my room first to covert to a proper bedroom railway room, such as painting and decorating, building a workbench come desk, and some shelving. Like most things house related there are a bunch of other things that also need to happen and that’s before I have to get stuff done out in the garden, but following the mantra of fifteen minutes a night means a little progress is still progress. Little things can be tackled whilst waiting on the big things.

So what’s with the new plan? Well actually it’s not that new and after thinking that I had a lightbulb moment I realised that I had already visualised it for a previous project. However they do say that good ideas float to the surface, or something like that, and it is as good to me the second time around. The idea revolves around the layout having two halves with a rural section and an urban section. I can’t claim to be the originator of this idea and I originally saw it on the Oops, it’s been over two months since my last post and although there’s been no noticeable activity here there has been progress in the background with some rationalising of the model rail empire in order to make way for new items that are more in line with the direction of my modelling for the moment. With the weather changing for the better now is the time to get outside and do any dirty work needed. That will come in time and I will be posting about that nearer the time I start out as I have a load of work to do on the room first, such as painting and building a workbench come desk and like most things house related there are a bunch of other things that also need to happen and that’s even before I have to get stuff done out in the garden, but following the mantra of fifteen minutes a night means little progress is still progress.

So what’s with the new plan? Well actually it’s not that new and after thinking that I had a lightbulb moment I realised that I had already visualised it for a previous project. However they do say that good ideas float to the surface, or something like that, and it is as good to me the second time around. The idea revolves around the layout having two halves with a rural section and an urban section. I can’t claim to be the originator of this idea and I originally saw it on the late Carl Arendt’s site some time ago and although not the exact idea I contemplated it certainly sowed the seed of the current plan. I have scaled back over iterations as I started out with a rather ambitious plan, but I have been trying to encourage focused and achievable modelling and rain in my expansionist tendencies. I did get somewhat zealous in my desire to simplify ending up with the idea of just having a circle of track as I diaorama but realised pretty quickly that it wouldn’t be very fulfilling in operational interest but could allow for testing out some new skills in a small limited space in the future.

Effectively this is just a roundy roundy layout with the yards in the visible sections rather than hidden away from the onlookers gaze. It is a designed to just watch trains and with a bit of automation one can sit back and imagine sitting on the platform watching the world go by with maybe a cool drink on a hot summers afternoon. I tried designing the plan for Kato Unitrack but found that prohibitive cost of just a simple track plan was going to add up to far more than I was prepared to pay. The Unitrack system though is great for starting out and enthusing the young in my view and bit by bit an empire can be built. So that leaves me the option of using Peco code 55 finescale track with handlaid switches. This not only makes for swift progress in the bulk of track laying but also allows me to have custom geometry to squeeze in a little more detail or lines where the Unitrack wouldn’t allow. After quite a absence, I need to brush up my Templot skills and draft out the preliminary idea. I find that it is a great assistance to seeing how the railway fits the room (meaning the actual room and the room on the board) as the 3d world doesn’t always match the reality, my last plan being case in point as it looked great on screen but was never going to fit the space in a month of Sundays.

I am going to attempt shorter posts but more often with a round up probably on a Sunday in order to make it easier to keep up with this blogging malarkey, something along the lines of blog concisely and blog often. It takes me what seems like days to write a post but really what most people myself included want to see it pictures of progress. I hope to have some exciting news for next weeks episode so stay tuned and till next time..

Kato Swiss RhB – 2017

27th May 2017 / / 0 Comments

Something I am pretty excited about is the forthcoming Kato additions to their 2017 Swiss Meter Gauge RhB range of stock. It would seem that they are expanding the range due to popular demand and the novelty value that everyone thought was going to be the case when Kato first started producing this line has been proceeded with some very popular stock choices bearing in mind this is really aimed at the Japanese tourist market and not the railway modeller. It would seem although with the addition of the 2017 items I thing the pendulum is swinging the other way and now modellers are hungry for more. Kato must have seen the surge in orders, I am of course basing this on pure speculation as I have no figures to back it up, as a green light to grow the range beyond their coasts.

Like most of ‘us’ European modellers I can’t wait till they bring out some wagons, and the speculation of what that might be is fun. I would guess it would probably be a cement wagon or maybe a container bogie wagon given the ubiquity of them. But thats way off in the future and for the moment I would have to get filling the penny jar for the first wave of coaches and a Ge4/4III or two.

So here is a bit of a peek at whats coming.

and a link to Gaugemaster‘s site in the UK though I have brought from Japan before but I need to work out the costings now due to currency fluctuations, but I can also recommend TrainTrax and have had very good service from them. Anyway exciting times.

From small planks, big layouts grow.

15th June 2014 / / 0 Comments

Although I completed this yesterday (almost) I thought it would be wise to have a bit of a test bed to trial a number of techniques and products I have never used before that being mainly the Kato Unitrack. I have kept it deliberately simple and at most will have two turnouts/switches on it. I thought that I could use it as a DCC test track and that will fit down the back on a small ledge behind the line shown on the right hand side of the board. I am thinking about adding my SprogII to the underside but will see how I go with this, I may just stick to the Kato controller that came with the GlaicerOnTour set.. Having Bachrus rolling roads that I can set up on it for running locos in is going to be useful and it delays the need for installing Decoders into the locos. On with point Digitrax do a drop in one but other wired ones can be installed just it is a bit harder due to space constraints.

I will be trying out joining Peco concrete flex track to the Unitrack and may try a bit of hand lay just as an experiment. The original discussion see-sawed around wether it would all be hand laid or all Unitrack then a mixture and then back and forth but the upshot of it was that the ends have to be Kato and anything in the middle is fair game as long as it allows the Kato and any future stock to run over it.

So todays 15 minutes are to finish the backscenes and create the fiddle yard. then its off to the model shop to find some ballast material. Well actually that will be tomorrow as nothing open today, being Sunday!

A test bed for Swiss GEX layout ideas

A test bed for Swiss GEX layout ideas

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