What to Build Next ?
May 2015 - by: Jim Picton
Having been in the hobby for over 65 years, I have found that there is always another model to build. So, where do we begin? What triggers our imagination to even decide what sort of model we would like to tackle? Myself, I have mostly built what interests me most, heavy construction equipment, anything mechanical, and all sorts of vehicles. Others may lean towards fairground rides, railway equipment, clocks, marine, etc. The list is endless.
I have built small models, large models and everything in between. Mostly freestyle, but I do occasionally thumb through old manuals to get ideas. After recently completing the Model 10.7 Block Setting Crane I came to the conclusion that there is an endless supply of models just waiting to be upgraded using some of the more modern parts available to us. Most of these old manual models performed poorly at best without a lot of modifications. So now with all this information at hand, how do I go about improving a model.
Where this all started was when I was glancing through the Super Model Leaflets and came across the Baltic Tank Locomotive. What is a Tank Locomotive anyways. Well, a bit of reading explained most of what I needed to know and I was hooked. In all these years I have never built any railway models and this looked like a good example to try my hands at.
The original model used lots of perforated strips and flat plates and a goodly supply of hub discs and circular plates of which I am in short supply. So my first challenge was to try to locate the above missing parts at a reasonable cost. Trying to locate things is another one of my hobbies as I frequent the antique shops quite often poking around for that elusive item that has been disposed of by others that no longer have any interest in it.
As most of the parts are coming from different sources, colours came into play which brings me to Plan B . My main building set is a dark red and dark green crane set and a mish-mash of red, green, blue, yellow and zinc parts. So I'm left with the major job of stripping and repainting parts to get a reasonable assortment of colours. I have settled on dark red / green / yellow and zinc. There goes the summer months.
The other challenge was to see what original parts used in the model could be replaced by current pieces or even something that I could modify to fit in with this new version of the model.
Printing out a copy of the model plans and making up a spreadsheet of the parts list proved to be a very important step in bringing this model up to date as I poured over the photos closely, read and re-read the instructions and changed my list accordingly.
I will go out of my way to avoid overlapping thicker parts like angle girders or flat plates as whatever you attach over them does not lay flat, so with extra girders I will make the proper length to suit even if that means cutting down a 25 hole girder to make a non-standard 20 hole girder.
To reduce the weight of the model the next step was to figure out if I could use flex plates instead of all those perforated strips and flat plates and if so how many and what sizes would work best. I started with a mock-up of the boiler measuring the overall length and building a cross section to establish plate requirements.
Sub-assemblies of various components verified my parts count and completed my parts list.
Now - the hunt is on....... actual model building is just a side line.
Jim....
I have built small models, large models and everything in between. Mostly freestyle, but I do occasionally thumb through old manuals to get ideas. After recently completing the Model 10.7 Block Setting Crane I came to the conclusion that there is an endless supply of models just waiting to be upgraded using some of the more modern parts available to us. Most of these old manual models performed poorly at best without a lot of modifications. So now with all this information at hand, how do I go about improving a model.
Where this all started was when I was glancing through the Super Model Leaflets and came across the Baltic Tank Locomotive. What is a Tank Locomotive anyways. Well, a bit of reading explained most of what I needed to know and I was hooked. In all these years I have never built any railway models and this looked like a good example to try my hands at.
The original model used lots of perforated strips and flat plates and a goodly supply of hub discs and circular plates of which I am in short supply. So my first challenge was to try to locate the above missing parts at a reasonable cost. Trying to locate things is another one of my hobbies as I frequent the antique shops quite often poking around for that elusive item that has been disposed of by others that no longer have any interest in it.
As most of the parts are coming from different sources, colours came into play which brings me to Plan B . My main building set is a dark red and dark green crane set and a mish-mash of red, green, blue, yellow and zinc parts. So I'm left with the major job of stripping and repainting parts to get a reasonable assortment of colours. I have settled on dark red / green / yellow and zinc. There goes the summer months.
The other challenge was to see what original parts used in the model could be replaced by current pieces or even something that I could modify to fit in with this new version of the model.
Printing out a copy of the model plans and making up a spreadsheet of the parts list proved to be a very important step in bringing this model up to date as I poured over the photos closely, read and re-read the instructions and changed my list accordingly.
I will go out of my way to avoid overlapping thicker parts like angle girders or flat plates as whatever you attach over them does not lay flat, so with extra girders I will make the proper length to suit even if that means cutting down a 25 hole girder to make a non-standard 20 hole girder.
To reduce the weight of the model the next step was to figure out if I could use flex plates instead of all those perforated strips and flat plates and if so how many and what sizes would work best. I started with a mock-up of the boiler measuring the overall length and building a cross section to establish plate requirements.
Sub-assemblies of various components verified my parts count and completed my parts list.
Now - the hunt is on....... actual model building is just a side line.
Jim....
