One Year Older

  
Actually one year and two days older from when I first posted on this blog. I seem to have missed my first anniversary through becoming distracted by other stuff. Other stuff being trying to either set up my own business, or find another job with a suitable employer. As luck would have it the job search came up with a job on Monday that I had to complete the application form for yesterday. I was a little distracted by filling in the multi-sectioned online application form, which ran to many pages.

I've been laid off now for two months. Three months if you count the last month of work when I was using up all my annual leave entitlement. One would think therefore that I have been busy building lots of model railway models and the like. Not so much.

I have been practising with my static grass applicator on odd bits of board, as I was not completely happy with the first attempts. It's not that there is anything wrong with what I did the first time around, but I wanted to see if I could improve the look of the grass by adding more layers, which is what I have been doing over the last week.

Today I was applying varnish over the tops of said static grass to see how this works as a sealant, as I find a lot of the grass tends to lift off over time? I'm probably handling the grassed areas too much, as I suspect that this method is best for looking at, and not robust enough to be handled as such. I've actually been painting the static grass to add shading to the finished product. I know that one can mix different shades of static grass material, but to my eye it all looks a little flat. Unfortunately, painting the static grass tends to lift it off, and if you over do it, tends to make the grass clog up. I'm going to experiment with some spray dies next.

Other than that I am trying to get on with getting the Hex Frog Juicers actually fitted. Trouble is that the layout has become a temporary storage area for other projects, like the grass boards I've been working on. That as they say is the trouble of living in a small flat with limited space.

Welcome Manifesto

Welcome to my first post of my blog about my interest British railway and American railroad model making. The title comes from Dr. Robert Churchward the author of Those Beautiful Daylight 4-8-4's. In it he mentions that Lima Locomotive works described building railroad locomotives as "no two alike", which I thought was apt for a model maker as I know that I strive to make variants of the same piece of equipment, all be it a freight car/wagon, locomotive, railway carriage/passenger car.

See what I did there. Yep, I'm bi-lingual, and will no doubt freely mix my terminology depending on whether I'm writing about North American railroads, or British railways.  However, I reserve the right to make mistakes and live with them.

So this blog will have posts about the models I've made in the past, drawn from my old RMWeb forum posts and new stuff about what I'm doing now. I've not been that active for the last couple of years due to health problems, but things have settled down and my passion for the hobby has been renewed now that I don't feel as ill as I have all the time. So what to expect?

I have eclectic interests and tastes.

American railroad wise and I will be posting stuff about the Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railway/Railroad that use to run in Northern California. I also have a passion for West Coast Southern Pacific Daylight locomotives, and I love the East Coast New York Central System Hudson, Mohawk and Niagara locomotives too. However, my current North America interest is centered around electric traction lines of the Chicago area. In particular the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee, the Chicago South Shore & South Bend and the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin Railroads, which were all electric lines that were built up under the auspices of Samuel Insull.

British railways are dominated by my love for all thing Bulleid and his work on the Southern Railway especially his Pacific locomotives. However, saying that, I have found myself modelling a joint line that was owned by the London Midland & Scottish, Great Western and Southern Railways; the West London Line which was in two parts, the original West London Railway and then extended later with the building of the West London Extension Line. So I have had to bite the bullet and learn all about Great Western track for this project, which is on par with me as a New York Central fan having to run my locomotives over Pennsylvania Railroad track.

Anyway, enough of the manifesto, more modelling stuff to come.