What is in that box today?

Modellers can all relate to this story. When you start out things are simple; You buy an engine, some wagons and some track and off you go (the engine and wagons are usually Ready-To-Run items at this stage). As time goes on you either cannot buy the items you want in RTR form or they need changing to those you do. Even with all the plastic items coming on the market in recent years there are still a few gaps, plus I think personally if you plan on building a layout you need something to help develop skills on.

Enter the world of kit building or kit-bashing (or RTR-bashing which doesn't have the same ring to it and usually applies to bashing the company who made it for the faults that snuck through from the factory but we digress). Kit building is a great way to develop skills that come in handy for building layouts as you will more than likely needs to make buildings from kits given the greater range. When you start out in this field you tend to build a kit, paint it then throw away the leftover pieces like the sprues and decals. As time goes on this changes a bit (saying that I have too many leftover sprues so I now chuck them in the recycling bin). The reason that changes is because you never know when a piece of plastic of a certain size might be needed and you have it all on hand. Same goes with the leftover brass etchings, regardless if they still have usable parts left on them such as handrails.

The purpose of this blog post is to show the value of building items yourself. And to show this is not just hot air, this is my box of leftover items:

I have everything from full decals sheets to bits of detailing items. The plastic sprue leftovers stay in another box. In the bottom of the box shown above I also keep copies of kit instructions as these come in handy sometimes (more-so on items where the kit manufacturer has long gone out of business and you cannot get these instructions anymore).

So that ends this rather unorthodox blog post. Maybe there will be future posts like this dealing with subjects like painting, decal application, my workbench (which is a mess) and other things of a like nature.

Moooving on

The building bug has bit hard after not doing it for so long. Maybe it was because of the dribble on TV as well but either way it means I can get going on a few more client projects. While there is still a pair of Z vans to finish, I decided with one job for myself almost done I could get the easier of the 2 other wagon types that I’m doing for the client done. 3 Steam Era Models M wagons are being constructed and the best way to knock over jobs like this is to assemble them like a production line. So that is what I’ve done:

These wagons are quite a nice model to assemble. In fact I’d go as far as to say that if someone is starting out in the hobby and wants an easy kit to learn the skills on assembly this would probably be it. That title once went to SEM’s GY kit but since the kit was updated 7 years ago with a bunch of fiddly etched parts to fit the M wagon now takes the mantle (it still has fiddly etched parts but less of them than the GY). Anyway these wagons should be finished in relatively short time as they just need couplings and a lick of paint.

I'm backkkk!!!

Hi all. Sorry for the lack of posts over the last 2 years. Things have been busy away from model railways. I have re-started building items again so I hope to kick things off again this month. I have at least 4 projects on the go so stay tuned for an update with pictures on that soon.