fifteen minute modeller

fighting procrastination fifteen minutes at a time

Tag: #modelrailways

Building a baseboard

14th April 2020 / / 0 Comments

In an attempt to get me back to blogging I am going to try doing some micro blogging, where I can just put up a short post just to keep the flow going until I reach critical mass and can keep the habit going. I enjoy writing these posts as it is a way of bringing thoughts together in a way that isn’t really possible in other mediums. But I have banged on about this enough and probably loads of times before so will keep my ramblings to a minimum.

The point of this post is to mark a milestone that is a major step forward for me. Some time has passed since moving to this new house and getting to the point where I have a space to play trains in. For so long I have been procrastinating about the fact that I didn’t have or couldn’t do but now I have no excuse! “You need to build a layout” I have been told!

The YouTube channel I started and probably why I post less here is a great carrot and stick in that it motivates me into getting things done and feeds the doing. It is however also the stick and is the beast that must be fed. Although I don’t profess to be one of those fancy full time YouTubers or someone who really knows what they are doing, one does get a little interested in the analytics. But to become a slave to them would be the death of a hobby I think. But I did make a commitment to myself to do a consistent content upload and on the whole I have kept to it.

I really like the process of creating the videos and although I know nothing about film making and editing I stumble on trying to get a little bit better every time I make one. Yes I know there is a tonne of stuff out there but I thought I would try and find my “way” before I start being influenced by others. It’s thinking about how one is going to tell the story of what’s happening in front of one, keeping it interesting to me as well as an audience is quite a tricky thing.

All of this is to say that my latest effort marks the start of hopefully many layout builds on my space constrained shelf. For me variety is the spice of life and boredom is the enemy of creation.

As a slight side note, in this time of uncertainty and restrictions I and pondering will I have enough resources to complete the build but for the time being I have enough to keep me going for quite a few weeks, hopefully to the point of near completion.

If you care to find out my efforts you can see them here

So until the next micro blog, stay safe and hopefully enjoy a bit of your own hobby time.

2020 New Beginnings

29th January 2020 / / 0 Comments

So over a year ago I made my last post here on my new blog that I opened to a fanfare of newness that the WordPress.com site just couldn’t compete with. Well that went well, right? Once again I am in the position of falling foul of the very thing I was trying to blog about. There is a pattern there. My name is Tom and I am a serial procrastinator!

Where does that leave this blog, well it’s almost an annual ceremony now, and I do know of blogs that are notoriously popular and have a similar posting schedule, but this is my attempt to change all that. Life has gotten in the way over the last year for various reasons but that’s honestly just excuses. Plenty of other people manage to carry on life and also spend time on their hobbies so what it comes down to in my mind now is desire. I am happy sitting around juggling track plans, watching training videos on line, and following other peoples modelling progress in forums et cetera and always have been a bit of an armchair modeller, or maybe that should be chronic?!

Once again I am at the starting point and thinking about which way to take my online modelling presence. In the last year I have not been totally idle, in that I have been tinkering around on the edges rather than creating actual things. During the spring and around the York Model Railway Show I decided to start a YouTube channel to help me document my progress, rather than talking about things on my blog. Daaan Daaaannn Daaaaaaa!! It was a way of pushing me to actually create things rather than talk about them. Well it went reasonably according to plan. It was rather nerve wracking at the beginning as I am very much not a natural presenter and more of an introvert. I think the joke is I have a face for radio. But it was interesting to see the small progressions in the short space of time when I did it consistently. By magic I managed to generate around 20 videos. Some of them were better than others, and due to the fact I wasn’t actually creating a layout or doing physical modelling particularly the content started to stall and I started filling it with visits to shows and visits to steam railways. Friends Kindly pointed this out and if you know anything about creating content for YouTube, the beast needs feeding if you want any kind of growth from it. This is a whole other topic and there are multitudes of people telling you how to clarify and maximise.. etc. But I guess anyone starting a channel is doing it for some kind of recognition. Some for money, some for fame, but in my case it is really just to help keep me motivated to enjoy a life long hobby.

However, it is my intention this year to rekindle the video channel and take it forward with some consistent modelling content where I show my efforts. Whether it be something that I am experienced in or whether it’s something I am a complete novice at, which in honesty is probably most things. Having watched some online creators talking about how to propel a YouTube channel forwards, it seems to be the opinion that one should niche down. Unfortunately this doesn’t suit my personality. So I am going to create what I enjoy doing and see whether people want to watch it or not. As I have stated on here before I have a very wide variety of interests when it comes to railway modelling and I don’t intend to stop that though it may put people of and annoy the algorithm. It helps me to be able to jump around, and I had become mentally stuck on something or more likely bored of it, due to attention issues. However I will try and keep content bundled into areas of interest, rather than flitting around. I also plan to add in occasional material like going to railway model shows or steam railways, but also things like how I create the videos which I think are of interest to some people, to see behind-the-scenes, and to see the technology used. One idea is to show The evolution of the layout through to it in quotes completion.

As I have a very limited space I see myself working on a number of projects to completion where they will make space for new ideas. Improvement though iteration. I see this as a truly blank canvas and unlike many I don’t maybe feel constrained by any particular boundaries. I don’t intend on amounting a massive stock for any, excuse the pun, platform as its not about collecting for me. This might all be different if I had a different space but I would like to think that this would be the way I modelled anyway. 

There is a lot more that I have in mind for the channel which really doesn’t fit here but if you are interested you can follow me over on YouTube. At the moment I only have around 30 subscribers and have not reached the point at 100 subscribers where I can claim the unique address for my channel. So one of the goals for 2020 is to get to 1000 viewers as this seems to be the point where are YouTube starts to promote the content to other people. This is also enough of a motivation to keep rolling out the vids. It seems to be a very dark art which I’m not particularly bothered about trying to game, as I really am doing this because I enjoy my railway modelling, if others enjoy this too then great.

So where does that leave this blog? Well I see it as running alongside my YouTube channel, as a place for my thoughts and ideas that don’t easily fit into a video format. More of a long form, considered scribblings. I also think this suits the type of content I enjoy writing and presenting. Some people enjoy the written word and pictures and YouTube is not for everyone, maybe a certain niche. It is my plan to carry on doing a post a week and maybe I will include my thoughts on current events in the railway modelling world, but it will be more of an archive of my thoughts and modelling ideas. 

I will probably link to some videos here but I’m guessing that most people that read this will already know of the YouTube channel. If not may I suggest you shimmy on over to https://tinyurl.com/vv69tr9. I am trying out some modern getting things done techniques in order to keep myself focussed and maybe that will be a topic I follow up on in the future as to how effective they and I am. For someone who regularly suffers lack of focus I have a strange fascination with order.. 🙂

I will leave you with best wishes for the new year ahead and hope that we achieve what we want to with our modelling aspirations in our hobby.

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..

Room with a railway

1st July 2018 / / 0 Comments

I have finally got round to starting to sort out my Railway space and it is a bit strange having an empty room like the day I moved into it. In order to be able to carry out some proper modelling I decided that this needed to take over other modelling progress just for the moment as I really like and need a organised space to work in and around. First up was emptying out the room ready for decoration as the above picture illustrates. Colour decided, check, I have to go to the local paint shop tomorrow and get my preferred colour. The very friendly gent who spent some time with me when I first went in explained colours and approach to painting which was very useful as it must decades since I waved a paint brush around in anger and he advised that one tin should to the job and if not a tester pot should finish it off.

There are a couple of things that I need to complete before I can prep and paint but having an empty room is motivation to get things done quickly. Once painted I can then start on building my workbench and desk. This will then separate modelling from computing and at the moment working off a rickety folding table is not good for ergonomics and also not being able have tools etc around you as they compete with monitors and keyboards.

Although again it may not seem like there is much progress in physical modelling much of the preparation work has been carried out to make sure that the bits of the puzzle all fit together. Certainly rebooting my blog has helped me stay focused and actually making something rather than allowing procrastination to be the thief of time and hopefully very soon I’ll have the modelling space I need and want.

Until next time..

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