fifteen minute modeller

fighting procrastination fifteen minutes at a time

Tag: thoughts (Page 4 of 5)

Layout design drawing (1)

17th September 2018 / / 0 Comments

In a brief lull in this mornings schedule and a cheeky fumble on YouTube I came across this video of recent traffic movements with some interesting lash ups. It lead me to doodle up something that’s been in the back of my mind for some time and originally was going to be a narrow gauge logging layout. However in this iteration it is transported to the Swiss Alps and is a fictional RhB location. It’s certainly not the first time this noodling has come up and I’ve a couple of posts about this but I thought I would use the blog as a bit of a scrapbook to look back on long after the paper has been chucked or the digital doodle has settled to the bottom of the pile. I may mock this up at some point..

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..

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

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..

Otto the big engine.

17th August 2018 / / 0 Comments

LGB 0-4-0 Otto

So curiosity got the better of me and I just had to get it out and have a play! That’s what we all do isn’t it? Well I do!

The purpose was to work out if it still worked after years maybe even decades languishing in its box and whether it would either be something to liquidate quickly or to cogitate on not really knowing what the outcome would look like as I have no space to home such large objects. It withstood the test of time and looked, well brand new, untouched in fact. Rather too quickly I was enamoured with its presence and heft. Yes I have seen G scale before but only paid attention because of the Swiss RhB stuff but never really thought much about owning the ‘premier garden rail scale’ far from it as I always thought only lottery winners had the where with all to build in this scale. A quick look at the LGB site advises that the Allegra set I have in N scale is a mere £2500 in G and that’s just one unit. Imagine a modest layout probably costing upwards of 20k But that’s all hypothetical, as purely on its physical size it would need a rather large land grab to have anything half way decent. This was my initial thought unboxing the train-set, but thoughts started to circulate and surmising what a minimum space micro layout might look like, even a very simple inglenook would take up six to eight feet. Then there’s the matter of switches, buy or build?

This is when I started having a reality check and realised that the current line of thought was foolish and decided to relieve myself of the temptation for yet another scale and distraction from the the current project however ever compelling. So time to put it back in its box and get it ready for a new owner, someone who will hopefully get more use out of it than I did.

Now back to normal service and getting on with some modelling. I have a couple of mini projects lined up more of which later.

Until next time..

Lost and found.

12th August 2018 / / 0 Comments

Last week I got a call from my best mate and it went something like this. “Hi I’m knocking down my shed next week and there’s a couple of things of yours that you might want to come and collect?”

Apart from it being an end of an era that saw us rescue it from an untimely end and move it bit by bit on a shopping trolley when we were just out of college many moons ago. It was where we plotted and planned our next bit world domination projects from and built our body of skills for the coming years of home ownership.

On arrival it was deemed best to get stuff loaded and the settle down for coffee and bacon sandwiches which seemed the best plan given the early hour of the day. That’s when I was presented with the exhibit below. I had completely forgotten about it, I might be forgiven for this as it was as I say from a dim distant past but it was a surprise never the less and a pleasant one.

So bring it forward to the current day and what do I do with it?! Neither do I have a garden of my own nor the space to run it in doors as G scale takes up a not too insignificant amount of space. But… I do really like the size and presence. But I’m trying to downsize my collection.. but I could have just a little inglenook.. but it could fund my layout project or some more tools, you can never have to many tools. Common sense will probably win out but for a moment I might just set it up on he carpet and watch it trundle around for a bit.. 🙂

LGB G Scale trainset

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..

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..

Ding Ding, Test track round Two.

20th June 2018 / / 1 Comment

img_0222

It was in to my mind the other day when I was just finishing up on test track 1.0 that I needed a project to move on forward to. The first one had proved its purpose in not only be able to test the stock I was about to sell but to also act as a test bed for future purchases. I am not ready to start on the big project yet as I need to get a number of things in place before I can do this. So my mind turned to what would be the solution to keeping the fifteen minutes modelling going on a daily basis and then it dawned on me that another test track was the answer, well actually a diorama is closer as I wanted to use it to start testing out new techniques and ideas but in a limited form that wouldn’t take me ages to complete. I then realised it could also be used to photograph stock and cameo pics for my Swiss layout.

fullsizeoutput_719It just so happens that I have some plywood knocking around that was cut for a project long ago that I am going to repurpose. Having a ready made base would speed things up no end, however I’m planning on trying to create a lightweight board with thin strips but braced more frequently for an open board design. As it’s attached to the wall via a cleat most of the weight will be held at that point so every effort to lighten the load is good.

I had tried mocking up the oval of track on the existing board but it didn’t leave me sufficient space at the front for the scenic area that I want to create. Then thinking about alternatives I came to the conclusion that in order to allow for the scenery ideas I had I would need height from ground zero to rail level to get the elevation angles I want for taking pics. Also I have never tried this method of baseboard construction having in the past always used the flat earth approach. Once again I seem to gravitate to that same occurring ideas but at least I am reigning in my natural tendencies to expansionism and so far have kept in focus the goal of just creating something and not getting stuck in the cycle of augmentation through to analysis paralysis.

Next time I will have some real pics of my efforts of keeping to the fifteen minute mantra but for now ill leave you with a bit of a visualisation..

fullsizeoutput_717

Until next time..

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..

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