fifteen minute modeller

fighting procrastination fifteen minutes at a time

Tag: w&llr

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..

Reading Room 04

3rd August 2018 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a while since my last update nothing worse than a blog that’s not updated so in order to halt the rot here is a post! Life often gets in the way of serious things like modelling which is the case for me over the last month not to mention the unbearably hot weather that seemed to go on forever and didn’t put one in a good frame of mind to sit at the work table and sweat over a hot soldering iron but now we seem to have some more seasonally temperate weather progress can be made. What motivated the mojo return? Well a bunch of envelopes landed on the doormat over the last week also going into my local newsagent and seeing the latest MRJ reminded my that I really need to pull out my finger and get back to building stuff for myself and others. For the moment I have been reading through the latest progress of both model and real railways that I follow and there are some events that sprang to mind that I would like to attend this year. Firstly there’s the 2FS AGM in October which is not that far from me and it would be good to meet up with some friends from 2mil land and then there’s the golden jubilee 2010 layout challenge! Hmmm. I really don’t need to create more distractions for myself and I am assisting a friend by building some track for there challenge, but it is tempting.

Then there’s the steam gala at the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway at the beginning of September. This is a bit more of a trip and definitely more logistical challenging. I have long been thinking about trying to do some volunteering for them since my first visit in 2014 but always thought I was too far away to be able to offer much only to then find out from an excellent blog that they have help coming in from Australia! Well that’s some commute and I’m guessing they don’t just pop down to polish the brass of a weekend. So it lead me to think that even though I’m around 170 miles away it’s just a stones throw compared with from the other side of the world. I’m going to look into if I can be of use to them, maybe not for the gala but certainly next year.

Keeping momentum going on a blog is the most important thing in order make the effort of doing it worthwhile and to show to myself that I can make progress if I just stick at it fifteen minutes at a time so expect some more bodging post in the not too distant future.

Until next time..

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