fifteen minute modeller

fighting procrastination fifteen minutes at a time

Tag: ramblings (Page 3 of 3)

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.

Volunteers needed

27th September 2018 / / 2 Comments

Many of us enjoy the railways we visit, taken pictures of locos or ridden the rails but most of us don’t stop and think about how this is achieved or presented to us. The majority of heritage railways are run on volunteer labour, from tea room staff, workshop fitters to loco crews giving up their time to preserve these lines. It has never been a better time in preserved railways especially here in the UK and the growth of all sorts of railways has been impressive. It would seem that you are never very far away from the heritage railway. It’s not that long ago since the demise of much of our railway history was enacted in order to “modernise” and streamline. However this has led to the creation or re=creation of times lost that people seem to miss.

There is something about a steam loco chuffing through the countryside that evokes a quieter, slower more peaceful bygone age that somehow we respond to. Just witness things like the Flying Scotsmans return to service after a decade long refit. I digress a bit, but the point of this post is to highlight those scenes are largely brought to use by a dedicated and often small bunch of people doing it because they love it and want to carry it forward to the next generations. As this band of enthusiasts grow older we need to be carrying on the flag of preservation with newer hands and minds. In this day and age of computers it is hard to attract attention to seemingly antiquated things but by the numbers of people turning out to see trains chuffing by there should be interest in protecting the past.

With all this in mind and the desire to do something myself I have signed up to volunteer on a little railway that may not be the most glamorous or biggest but has given me and many more pleasure over the years. It’s not that close to me and there are many more between me and it but there’s just something that pulls that no other has so far. I will no doubt post more about this as I am inducted and assimilated into the railway but for now I just wanted to highlight the need to do something about saving our heritages where ever you are. If you have some time, even if it is only a day a year, consider a local railway or any other interest you may have as they rely on the likes of use to keep the wheels turning.

Until next time..

Pressure valve(s)

16th September 2018 / / 0 Comments

Some times life throws curve balls and things don’t go according to plan, see last weeks post, and it seems as though I’m running in treacle. I did go upstairs and sit down at the modelling table but I just felt I wasn’t doing something that I wanted to be doing and just doing it for the sake of doing something. Maybe this is important but ultimately one has to feel like one is enjoying it. So this last week I have tinkered with a number of kits but I’ve been distracted by a number of things not least the gogglebox in this case Youtube. I started off looking for some info on soldering white metal kits and went down the rabbit hole of home casting. I have a 009 narrow gauge kit that I told a friend I would build and without too much exaggeration it is probably a year since I made that commitment. Now the fly in the ointment is that it must be decades since I last took a soldering iron to one of these stress inducing box of bits. I remember the first time I endeavoured to join even to bits of white metal together and ended up with a pool of molten gloop. This didn’t inspire courage or progress in this particular brand of model building and since that day I haven’t touched said white metal in any shape or form. However not one to shirk ones duties I decided to look up “effective white metal soldering” on the Toob to see if I could take the box of bits given to me and turn it into a reasonable rendering of a Bagnall loco. After watching these videos I decided the best course of action would be to get a sacrificial goat and test out my skills before committing to turn friends prized possession into another pool of crud.

Now some of the inactivity was down to the fact that next weekend I’ll be going away for a bit of a jolly to Wales to stay with friends and as is custom we will go an visit a railway of some shape. They are pretty much a cats swing from just about any railway related attraction in Wales and so quite often going down there provides a dilemma to which we should visit. Next weekend there’s a Gala at the SVR but I’m not totally sure of the itinerary yet.

So what of the fifteen minutes a day? Well I am in the process of building another baseboard to put a micro layout on and that will be the focus of my efforts for coming weeks until I can get room sorted out. Oh yes and then there’s the white metal kit and a track plan for that.

I’ll leave you with another sneaky peak at another stock roster for the up and coming layout on the last run home..

Until next time..

A time to play trains.

26th August 2018 / / 0 Comments

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Temp Table Top Switching Layout

Life seems to be rather hectic at the moment and progress on modelling projects has been slow again. In order to keep the mojo going I decided to go back to basics and relive those childhood memories of setting up the train-set on the kitchen table also I thought it would be fun. I’m not sure why I haven’t done this before as all of those years of saying I didn’t have space etc and yes while technically I didn’t have space for a traditional layout I could have had a micro table top setup. The table top was/is the answer to temporary ‘playing’ which in my view is one of the most important parts of railway modelling. So often I forget this and this is when I drift away from from my hobby. I would be playing even if I had a big layout; we can argue that is is all very serious and that we are reenacting the real world and using real constraints but after all we are just playing trains . It helps that in this case I am using N scale as the bigger gauges may be a problem to operational enjoyment but its not impossible to replicate something with interest.

As you can see this is a very simple inglenook though not the traditional 5|3|3 but a 3|1|2 but still enough to keep interest going for as long as one wants to spend. Typically this can be run on a simple system just marshalling cars to different locations but can be extended into a more complicated operations based, and I use air quotes around this word “layout” as at the end of the session it gets packed away again ready for the next time I feel I want to unwind or have an innovation to the process. I have very briefly looked into car cards and operational layouts but wanted something flexible enough to be able to spend two minutes or two hours, well maybe not quite that long but you get the idea. It’s amazing what the imagination can conjure up as a non existent world. Something not even Virtual Reality can compete with.

All I needed was a board, some cards, and a toothpick to make my  imaginary world animated. First of all I tried using some very tight radius (150mm) Kato curved track but found that the loco pushing would just derail the first wagon and then subsequent ones in rather spectacular fashion and that no matter what I did I couldn’t get a train round the curve. It’s no real surprise really and I kind of knew it wouldn’t work but never harms to try these things out just to make sure. Plan B was to then run have a straight layout but the problem then was how much space did it need to have three wagons in staging and a loco. Sitting next to me there were some bits of 6mm plywood which are 19″ x 36″ long from another ditched idea, that might do? It was a bit of a squeeze with over hangs diagonally at both ends but it did fit the required wagons and loco all be it at a jaunty angle as you can see.

I then thought about how I would marshal wagons around the yard and thought about flipping coins, rolling dice or using online random selection selectors! But then I remembered a card system that I had seen over on rmweb by an exceptional modeller John Flann and thought that I could utilise this for both wagon and spots. After a few trial runs I decided to ditch the cards for the spots as there are not really enough different locations to make it worth the extra complexity. I guess if this idea ever expanded it would be more suited to the multiple sets of cards. Then there is the possibility of computerised selections, but the purpose of this table top set up is to be able to just play and not too complicated. All of the selection could also be easily done with a dice as it nicely coincides that the spots and wagons add up to six. Yes I could pop down to the local D&D store and get multiple sided die but…. I settled on the pack of cards method. Now that the method of selection had been decided it just needed a loco.

I have four locos to choose from and they are all from the North Eastern part of America where my interest lie. Don’t ask me why as I am not sure my self but I guess it was something to do with the shortlines and the covered bridges, oh and probably the greenery. I would hate to add up the hours browsing nerail pics. I am not one for the desert sceneries and long block trains I much prefer seeing the odd wagon rumble by with an older loco in charge. Rather the ol’ Geep than the massive new breed of modular engines. I’ve always had a fascination for the covered bridges as I could never work out why you would go to all that effort, as hereabouts plain old simple limestone bridges dating back to pack horse trails are widespread and build with no frills to withstand wind and rains straight off the Pennines. One day I would like to attempt building a covered bridge but then I would probably need a layout to put it on! Back to locos, they are all NE roads as I said and at the moment pristine clear, bog standard, out of the box. I have yet to build up the courage to plaster grime all over them but feel this time is coming once I have learnt some weathering skills on a sacrificial wagon. At some point I was planning to DCC them, but when the decision was made to downsize my eclectic collection I decided that the US stuff was no longer required. Looking at it now I am starting to think I might have been a bit premature and that I don’t have a whole lot of stuff, i.e. 4 locos and 25 wagons, so maybe.. I would keep hold of them 🙂 I have always like the freight handling part of the shortlines which can be replicated for railways in the UK but you have to go back to pre-nationalisation to achieve this and for the moment I am not so interested in that period. So with the stock currently I have a bit of variety but without needing huge amounts of storage space. I also love the smoothness of the US stuff over cruddy UK locos, yes I know things have come on a long way since I last messed around with N gauge but the disappointment in those early years hasn’t left me, still. The more I talk about this the more I think “hmm just a little layout” But for the moment I will be happy to pack away my temporary layout till the next time I want to get it out and play… oh operate!

I am adding some websites I like and follow for possible ideas and resource. This website was the first I came across and for information about Ingelnook definitions and layouts it is a good place to start. Of course there is the evergreen site from now sadly passed Carl Arendt, however this is being resurrected over at carendt.com I believe. Here are a few more to peruse;

 

Until next time..

Looking for detail.

19th August 2018 / / 0 Comments

In preparing to build layouts in my mind I like to have a clear picture of what I’m building and in order to do that what is needed is copious amounts of detail. In this day and age there is a plethora available to us modellers with access to the internet. However this doesn’t always conjure up the necessary facts, so the only way to combat that is “boots on the ground” as the military likes to say. For this factor I guess that’s why we model what’s close to us and not something halfway round the world although many do now with the help of the interwebs.

I have long been interested in the architectural aspects of layouts and the buildings on them. I think what started it off was seeing Pendon Museum and Chiltern Green at a very young formative age. I think it set me on the path of modelling the train in the landscape.

Step forward a number of years and I came into a copy of John Ahern’s Miniature Building Modelling, then it really started to grip and I started to collect more modelling books on the making of buildings. The library grew and grew then with the advent of video the collection of dvds started.

This helped with the modelling I wanted to achieve but I wasn’t happy with the final outcome. I wasn’t sure what was missing until I found the book on prototype modelling by David Jenkinson and everything changed. I could see that using a real location was how one gets realism. I have a feeling that the modellers and layouts I admired also appreciated the landscape first along with the railway and there’s plenty of examples that I can call on as evidence like Ditchling Green, Totnes and Yaxbury to name a few.

Now to the picture, not the best conditions but then it’s detail I want and not lighting effects. There’s plenty of reference around me and I also feel that a lot of the time when we are out snapping we are missing the mundane and that’s the important part for me. All the pics we take usually are pointing at something that’s attracted us like a landscape or an event but how often do we think of the things that we don’t look at. This is what I’m setting my mind to now as collecting the periphery is just as important as it was back in the mists of time. I think of the pictures from the beginning of the century and due to cost and the technology available we were lucky to have as many pics as we do. Now living in an age where the majority of us have a camera in our pocket there’s no excuse to record the minutiae.

So I’m now building my vernacular picture archive for data I’ll need to create the scene I want model in a future layout. I’m going to spend a bit of time traveling around my locale snapping away at anything that interests me. I have a bit of a thing for run down out houses and sheds and anything quirky but that’s another story.

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..

Reading Room #3

16th June 2018 / / 0 Comments

I thought I had got all the old magazines rounded up and rendered down to my digital library after the move but apparently not. So I’ve spent most of the day reading old Railway Modellers. I’d forgotten some really good articles and layouts. There are many timeless stories that wouldn’t look out of place now for there observation and tones.

If you have a pile of magazines, paper or digital have a delve into them and maybe you’ll be inspired by something.

Round a round

13th June 2018 / / 1 Comment

Following on from a conversation that I had with a fellow modeller Chris, we talked about a plan that keeps niggling away at you and keeps popping up in ones thoughts but you just can’t leave it be, just tweeking it a bit here and there but probably with no real intention of building it.

So I present to you my internal circle as I call it. It is a concept that I have noodled away at for probably decades in varying shapes and forms and really springs from an article I read in the Railway Modeller way back when about a layout called Littleton Curve by Brant Hickman in the May 1997 issue I’ve added a link to YouTube video. For some reason it just lodged in my mind and although truly a micro layout it captured and atmosphere that resonated with me. Maybe it was something to do with the colours and the attention to detailing but for what ever reason it was forever imprinted in my modelling psyche.

I do find the subject of modelling motivations an interesting conversation. For many it’s just playing trains, or watching the trains go by, others it’s the operation of the railway or just a particular niché such as loco building or architectural building and for others it’s the back story or the environment that’s important but we all have an image in our minds of the thing we want to recreate. It would be interesting to survey railway modellers as to what they model over their and I use the term loosely, career, as to whether they stick to a similar geographical location and or era of modelling. Maybe this is just ramblings of an overactive mind but the fact I think we do all have our own recurring imagined worlds somehow helps the creation of any project. I think imagination is the most important tool on our workbenches and I see my track plan iterations as just a kind of mental workout in order to create as best a reproduction of the the world I have imagined.

For me the imagined world started with my circle of track on the carpet at the tender age of seven with my Hornby SDJR tank loco and two four wheel coaches and circle of track criss crossing the country with passengers to deliver and freight to collect. This led on to a bit more sophisticated but primitive sheet of ply and a class 47 trundling around, the the layout was still planned in the mind and committed to paper before and track was pinned down.

Over the decades I must have drawn many hundreds of plans in sketchbooks, notepads, and on back of envelopes with very few surviving the passage of time but the ones that have stuck in my mind are the ones that have captured the imagination for some reason. I will keep doodling as it keeps me connected even in times where modelling may seem impossible. I hope you do too.

Until next time..

State of the nation

2nd January 2014 / / 4 Comments

So 2013 was a bad year and lead to little or no modelling due to circumstances and the loss of modelling mojo, however in 2014 I am hoping to break that trend and start off on a positive foot. I realise that doing 15 mins modelling a day may not be completely attainable for most of us and wanted to start off saying that I am in that category myself. However the principle is to do something railway related every day. In the highs and lows, well to be honest mainly the lows of last year it was particularly hard to keep the mojo motivated, and at some points I thought what the hell am I doing playing with toy trains, just get rid of it all and start another hobby like RC planes or motorcycle maintenance.

Well thankfully things have improved and I feel a bit more positive about my life in my hobby and want to produce something that I can ‘play’ with and also be proud of producing. As you can probably tell from the projects post I do have the tendency to wander off the beaten track (pun intended) and get dazzled by shiny new things. If I was to set new years modelling resolutions (which I am not as I have long realised that metaphorically 2 minutes after I set them I am breaking them again) it would be to stick to one task until its completed. That said I do really like opposing interests and so therefore it is going to be a battle of wits with myself this year to produce.

All the projects from last year still stand and I am looking forward to getting stuck into things. I also wish all ‘you’ out there in modelling land a happy year ahead and look forward posting my progress here and to reading about others modelling endeavours.

..and finally the new found mojo came from a Geography project for me niece, a little bit of hand laid nominal Zn2/3 gauge track solder by both myself and once taught my niece with some realistic wobbles.

Down in the valley

Down in the valley

Happy new year and 2014

Not exactly modelling but…

14th September 2013 / / 1 Comment

Well as I sit and wait to get my stuff out of storage with all my train related swag, I found the latest MRJ in my local newsagents, they actually have a good choice of mags and its a long time since I brought any seeing as pretty much everything you will ever need or didnt know you need can be found on the internet. Its funny as going through stuff brought down from the loft from my childhood I found a box of Railway Modellers’ dating back to the late 1970’s. I can still remember the joy of collecting my copy from the said news agents on a Saturday morning and then spending the day poring over it until I had read every last article and advert.

It’s funny, although I am a proponent of emedia and think it is the way forward once the publishing companies get their heads round the new media model (I don’t want to pay the same for a digital copy as the print version and until this is addressed..) it is a pleasure finding those crumpled, worn and dusty volumes from a bygone era that once again can be sat down with a cuppa tea and reminded of how far we have come in the hobby. Lets face it who would have thought you could control your trains from a ‘mobile phone’ and that we would be using electrified sieves to model grasses.

Oh and also found in the loft was a packet of Peco track of different gauges some books on Swiss railways and a HO Atlas GP40 in Reading RR colours.

Another cup of tea and another backofanenvelope dream to plan..

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