Episode 7: Loose Ends, Last Orders and a Fresh Challenge
Our planned house move is now likely to happen in the Summer. With more time to get ready, an Easter update makes sense. There's a new challenge to report on, as well as some modelling progress. I'll start with loose ends being tidied up:
Loose Ends:
Left over from my American HO project last year was my incomplete Walthers' Grain Elevator Kit. I've been keen to build this for a good while, so even though my plans have changed it was nice to get it finished.
First task was to weather the head house and loading / unloading shelters. As I use brush weathering, it made sense to do this before assembly:
I added some styrene card strengtheners to the head house when I assembled it, and a false floor at the elevator end to hide the curve of the silos:
The finished model is as impressive as I'd hoped, even if it would still be small by prototype standards:
(Some of these images also appear in my Narrow Gauge HOn30 thread)
Question is, what to do with this now? We're having a big clearout, as our new home will have less storage space. The Narrow Gauge mini-layout I built in 2021 has been passed on through our local 009 Society Group, and I have thrown out some of the building kits I assembled a while back but now have no use for (I really didn't need a dozen railway stations!).
I wasn't sure what to do with these three American HO building kits though - all personal favourites but also now surplus:
All three being Walthers meant they were designed to complement each other, with selective compression carefully managed to help them go together. When I compared them to a part-built Craftsman Kit of a single store however, the illusion was broken. All of a sudden, the Walthers buildings look smaller than they probably should, although all are 1:87:
(Images above have also appeared in my HO Union Station Diorama thread)
After this test, it was a much easier decision to part with the three plastic buildings, donated to the local Model Railway Club for use or onward sale through their Club Shop. This has created a bit of space on the workbench:
The Craftsman Store Kit is being kept for possible use in my HOn30 project, but progress is slow. Each window has delicately cut separate upper and lower sashes. As the frames (and shutters) have 'peel and stick' backings, they aren't difficult to assemble, it's just one of those jobs I find best tackled in small stages:
When completed, the model will appear in my Narrow Gauge Modelling Thread.
Last Orders:
My previous blog entry talked about the impact of Hatton's Model Railways closing. Largely out of sentiment, I made a last minute purchase just before the website closed, buying a heavily discounted Continental Signal Box (Stellenwerk):
(also pictured on the ‘Hattons to close’ thread)
But 'Last Orders' applies to some modelling too. Our current, Victorian house has a single-storey outhouse at the back which I've been able to use for spray painting and as a baseboard factory. With a couple of larger kits in my stash, it makes sense to spray the larger components now, even if I don't tackle the actual kits before we move.
It's no coincidence I have two models using the same components, as I bought the Post Office as a substitute when I couldn't find an affordable kit of the station (I'd noticed the Postamt is modelled on an end part of the station):
Key parts of the Post Office were sprayed first. This is now all dried and back in the box (not the box pictured):
Just getting a photo of the pieces for the station proved a challenge: the box is not only large but 4" deep. In the end I took advantage of the floorspace created by ditching a bed that used to be in this room but had become surplus too:
These are just the walls, having been painted and left to dry in the outhouse before coming back in. It's big:
I think the photo on the box shows the station as it appeared in an earlier era, matching the postcard shared by @Mikkel below my previous blog entry, here. Over time I think it has been repainted in a lighter colour, which I prefer and which explains my choice of colour for the walls. The current version of the kit is lighter in colour. I also brush painted the impressive entrance piece for colour matching:
With the baseboard factory also closing, it'd be good to place a final order (with myself) before we move. At the moment it's all just tidied up for house showings:
But this brings me to:
The Fresh Challenge:
In previous posts for this blog, I've been refining my modelling aims and project list. But I've now run into: 'the problem.' Our new home is more modern and will be much better for us in many ways, both as a family and as my wife and I work out of the home office. But we're losing spare space and storage - not just the outhouse. As we make progress with our much needed downsizing clearout it's become possible to see how life will work after we move, and we've realised the plan we had to accommodate my modelling and layout interests isn't going to work - at all!
Long-suffering readers of my contributions to RMweb over the past four years will be familiar with the regular changes our family needs have imposed upon my ideas for space to use. Now I'm having to think about modelling with no space at all.
Let me explain: I'll be able to set up a workbench in a spare bedroom when the family aren't staying, but the lingering smell of paint and glue means it needs to be in a room where others aren't waiting to use the space (we won't have a garage, a cellar or a large shed in the garden either). I can look at ideas for portable layouts, but have to think about a question I was first asked about portable layouts by @AndyB in August 2020: "Where will you keep the layout?" It's a rather good question for a property without storage space:
I have been here before: the first layout I ever had (but didn't finish) was a very compact N-Gauge Branch Terminus to Continuous Run that could easily have come from an early Cyril Freezer plan book (3'8" x 2'2", with 9" min. radius curves and points):
I wrote about it in the Layout and Track Design Forum back in 2021 (here). When not in use, it actually went into my wardrobe! But I wasn't trying to include a station that will be 3' long or run mainline trains (or have three layouts)!
If I'm going to build some new baseboards before we move, I need to get my thinking cap on again. Despite all the lessons I've learned, I've never really considered the prospect of having no dedicated space. I've always assumed I'd have a railway room one day (when the kids grew up), and never imagined I wouldn't one day be building the kind of layouts I dream about.
I'd like to see trains like this running on my own layout:
This was a test run to see if a six coach train looks OK for mainline running in H0 (I decided it was):
But a 6' x 3' table top isn't what I'm aiming for! I know lots of dedicated modellers face this challenge, and have often posted on the Boxfiles, Micro layouts and Dioramas Forum (and back in the day contributed to Carl Arendt's Micro-Layout website). It's just not what I'd been working towards.
I've plenty of modelling to keep me busy (not everything has been shown in this post), but whatever happens next may - once again - look a little different. Until then, thanks for reading, Keith.
Edited by Keith Addenbrooke
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