October School Holidays

Some time ago I wrote up about some benchwork for a layout and you may be wondering how it is going. Something I have learnt that model railroading encompasses many fields and skills. Also that scale is what you make of it. Smaller scales mean omitting details where it is not possible to model the detail realistically. Larger scales demand more detail as the absence of items is able to be picked up by the eye, luckily material strength and so on allow us to add detail as the scales increase in size. And then there is the ultimate scale, 12 inches = 1 foot, or 1:1. One might think that objects are no longer a model at this size, but models are a representation of the real thing, not the real thing, no matter what the size. So it is that recently I made a model of a clap board. It had to look like a clap board and sound like a clap board, but not be a clap board in other particular.

Over these October school holidays I took some leave from work and the time had come to bite the bullet with doing something with the plywood that had been cut for a baseboard for a future layout. We have a nice corner in our front entry way and we have needed another bookshelf for some time now. All these things came together in a perfect storm as I had time to do something about all these things. And so a bookshelf has been born courtesy of the plywood panels. Add some fancy hard wood trimming with and without detail and it is well on the way. This had to be more than a model but used some of the skills I have learnt about wood as part of railway modelling over the years.

Also mentioned less time ago I am detailing a Dapol Autocoach with the Dart casting kit. After painting the interior of the coach, I have started doing the body detail of the coach. As has been noted by others elsewhere the floor mounted cab controls both look higher than they do in the prototype so I have not affixed them inside just yet. Currently there are handrails, lamp irons and steps now replacing the moulded versions on the front of the cab as below.