fifteen minute modeller

fighting procrastination fifteen minutes at a time

Tag: thoughts (Page 5 of 5)

All change..

10th June 2018 / / 8 Comments

It’s been a year since arriving at my current spot and now is the time to finally sort out my space. It’s the first time I have had the time and a space to be able to mould to my plans and so I have drawn up some ideas to help me decide what goes where. Now normally I’m guessing that most people have a reasonable amount of room to set up their model railway but in my case I have about 7 feet along a wall for layout and about the same for a bench, so some might think rather compact. With a bed the usable space becomes even more restrictive but then the challenge of how one goes about deciding the optimal use case is part of the fun for me.

First of all everything needs to come out and the room prepped for a coat of paint it’s been a bit of a drawn out process picking the colour as I wanted something darker not only to reduce light levels in the room but to also make a bit of a backdrop for taking photos and maybe some video in the future. As it is a north facing room light levels are lower but this works to my favour in that going for the “low key” effect a darker hue reduces the reflections. I know this is not necessarily railway modelling related but I definitely subscribe to a holistic approach and taking into account things like room environment is maybe something that is not given much though in the genesis of a railway room, it is as much about a bit of theatre as just a room to run a railway. Also I will probably only get one chance to setup as I want as the disruption of reinventing it would be too costly and time consuming.

Much of the room furniture needs to be configured to the need and as such I’m unlikely going to roll up to Ikea and return with a flat-packed solution. Due to the limited space I have measured up the workbench and desk to allow for a comfortable work height and depth and as can be seen from plan the idea of a fold up extension is to give me a good depth when modelling but can be folded away to not interfere with layout operation when I am playing trains! The idea of having to get out and put away may be onerous to some but for me it will be a help in that my natural tendencies to clutter and chaos will be curbed.

So now that I have the plan in place and have mocked up with CAD (and that’s cardboard aided modelling) I need to get on with the doing. Over the next week I’ll be making a start and will post on the progress.

Till next time

New beginnings, again.

9th February 2018 / / 0 Comments

After some what of a long hiatus I have come back to 15minutemodelling with a renewed vigour and desire to take this somewhere other than the siding to nowhere. I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the lack of any progress with real modelling and didn’t feel that blogging about ideas and plans all the time was actually getting me anywhere. In the intervening time I thought long and hard about my direction and where I wanted to put my efforts with the little time and resources I have and settled on the one area I really wanted to model. To that end I took the rather hard decision to rid myself of all of my disparate collections of scales and gauges that I had accumulated over the years and in some cases decades from gathering dust in boxes unopened and unloved.

I am currently auctioning off groups of items in anything from Z to O scale and I didn’t realise that I had so much stuff and let’s not mention the duplicates! Once my horde has been monetised I will have the funds to get exactly what I want from baseboards to stock and electronics for this layout. It has been rather a cathartic riding myself of decades of “stuff” and centring on the one thing that I really want to model with out the distractions of multiple scales. I have always been a rubber gauger and allowed myself to get carried away with the notions and dreams of one day producing quality modelling in all these forms. As time has ticked by I came to the realisation that this was never likely to happen and that I shoud give up on this misguiding utopia. Looking around there are skilled and talented modellers that manage to juggle the different disciplines of railway but in my limited research they do tend to stick to their preferred medium. Obviously there are always exceptions to the rule but I am not one of them leading to the ephifany that I am and should be a one trick pony. This has freed up my thinking and allowed me to concentrate my efforts to actually achieve a built and finished layout. I currently have a bit of shelf space that I can utilise that I won’t get into trouble from unhelpful or inflexible landlords for drilling into walls and putting up electrics.

As I have talked about on this blog some time ago I do enjoy the challenges of layouts in smaller spaces and for me it has to be operations. I get enjoyment out of organising freight stock so for any layout there has to be some reason for movement of freight as I am really not into watching commuter trains hurry by. I love seeing old footage of a sleepy line switching out some old vans and yes I know that this may have only happened once or twice a week on the smaller branch lines and this doesn’t translate well to a model railway if run somewhat prototypically but then I am not interested in running a timetable from one summers day in 1951, but you get the picture.

This leads me on to the here and now and the reason for returning to 15minmodeller. Having de-invested myself of all of those distractions I have decided to focus all my attention on modelling, wait drum roll please, Swiss metre gauge. I have always had a fascination with it from when I was pretty young having Combe across it in some books given to me by a relative from far off lands. More specifically I will model the RhB, this is mainly in part due to Kato bringing out its range of 1:150 “Little Red One” line. This sparked off in me the realisation that I could actually achieve a layout in a limited space and that wouldn’t break the bank. With all the existing N Scale infrastructure and possibilities it just made complete sense, something could be was found to adapt if needs be rather than having to scratch build to some arbitrary esoteric scale I had picked this week. That’s not so say that this doesn’t lend its self to scratch building in fact I have thought about many things that will need to be manufactured this way.

Over the coming months I will be mapping out the plan and hoping to get started on the real thing. However the blog is not just about modelling a railway I am hoping to try out new skills and methods that I want to document into a kind of manual for myself of how to build a model railway as I have never done one for myself and as the saying goes today is a good day to start. I want to try and set myself some kind deadline for progress however small but those 15 minutes soon add up. Hopefully my next post won’t be so long overdue.

The Big Idea.

28th May 2017 / / 0 Comments

Although no physical modelling has taken place so far I haven’t been idle and in fact I see  3D modelling to be just as relevant and enjoyable as the real modelling. As I stated in my last post getting to the point where I have a layout space is still someway off and all the prep that need to go into that will take up the majority of my time at the moment. You can see by the picture below that there is an ideal wall space for the shelf layout and IMG_2311.jpegalthough I looked at using the longer wall on the other side of the room but I have deliberately settled for the shorter one as this restricts my natural expansionist tendencies, well at least for the time being. At the moment it is an easier space to convert as well as there are some pretty hefty cupboards around the rest of the room and it would make for storage difficulties due to there being not much else in the house. You may note the mattress on the floor however this will not stay there and once a suitable bed is procured will disappear to the other side of the room. I did ponder a Murphy bed but in the end too much hassle for not much gain.

So this is my blank canvas a where I get to do my modelling and where I need to map out the space requirements. From the window side to the door frame I have 6′ 6″ exactly but I am thinking about having a drop down bridge that would need six inches to allow it to be attached to the wall and braced vertically therefore giving me six feet of useable space. Then comes the basic concept; although not actually modular the structure of the railway(s) will take a similar approach in that the boards will be have a common interface with the fiddle yard or staging and will all be three feet long allowing them to be housed below the running layout in some custom draws that I thought could use the draw front as the back scene once turned round. All this is a concept at the moment and needs to be somewhat tested out.

Screen-Shot-2017-05-28-at-18.48.37.jpeg

Here is the digital mock up and with the frame and brackets I can place the layout height at pretty much anything I like. At the moment I am pondering a eye level sight line and as I don’t see multi-hour marathon operating sessions it would be like having a standing desk, and that gives good separation to the workbench and layout. Many people may say “isn’t this too much effort going into a six foot self layout” but for me playing around with the building block gives me just as much fun.

I’m off to test some things out at build a 1:12 mockup of the room. My findings in the next post.

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

Newer posts »

© 2025 fifteen minute modeller

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑