"Irons in the Fire"
If you're anything like most modelers, you've got projects aplenty. And probably more than just a few too, I'd wager. I can certainly understand one or two. That makes sense, glue has to set, paint has to dry, parts need to get ordered and there's a wait while they arrive-- and lots of reasons. But I'll bet you've got more than that even.. Kits half-started sitting in boxes, locos stripped waiting for their day in the paint shop, and who knows what all else-- and we're not even talking about the stuff sitting on the shelf just waiting to get started! So what do you suppose it is about us Model Railroaders that inspires us to take on so many projects and then take so long to get them completed? Do you have that problem? I know I do. Some of it-- sure, is just plain lack of time. You only get so much time to work on stuff before the next "Honey Do..." crops up. Or you put it aside and forget about it only to find it later. I know I do that too.
So I'm curious about your unfinished projects... how many do you have? How long have they been sitting there waiting patiently for you to return? What do they need to get them finished up? (Is there any chance of it happening?? :-) Why do you think we start so many and take so long to finish 'em? Or-- maybe you don't.... maybe you're one of those rare few who has everything down to an art. Everything planned, everything proceeding apace... so how do you do it? What's your secret to getting stuff done?
So whichever way you lean, tell us about it! That's my question for this week.
John
Well I'll fess up.
I have 5 kits started and now on hold - that I know of.
A Northeastern stock car kit form about 35 years ago. I started this when I was first interested in S scale, but put it aside unfinished when I switched to O scale. Just haven't got back to it.
A locomotive kit started over 10 years ago. Not sure why this one hasn't moved along, but I have no plans to get to it any time soon.
A MOW shed that I work on every now and then. It's my first laser kit and my first using water based paints. It's not going well, but it's a learning experience. The move 2 years ago kind of pushed it to the side.
I have a plastic boxcar kit I started before this last move and it's still buried in a box somewhere.
Recently, I started a traditional billboard reefer craftsman wood kit which I work on as a change of pace from the layout..
My main project is the layout, benchwork for the current 12 x 31 ft phase is completed. Road bed and trackwork have begun.
Over time I'll finish the kits and do many others I have, but at the moment I'm more interested in getting the layout running. I don't really get concerned over the projects being unfinished. This is a hobby and I work on the parts as I'm interested in them. It'll all get done or not as the case may be. But I'm okay with that.
Enjoy
Paul
I plead guilty, Your Honor. Guilty as charged, and then some. But, there are extenuating circumstances....
But first, may I remind the Court that I have been a good modeler, overall. My layout has grown larger and more complete, and most weeks see at least a small reduction in the number of square inches of pink foam. But it's just, well, it's just that there is so much to do.
Ours is, after all, a multifaceted hobby. There are so many different parts of every job, even the smallest one. Some of them we like, and some we avoid like the plague. So, after all is said and done, the ballast isn't done. Or the feeders dangle unconnected beneath the layout. After all, we can still run trains on unballasted track, right? And if the trains run despite a few missing feeders, well, who's to know?
Even if I wanted to, Your Honor, I can't always work on a project from start to finish. My layout is in the family room, and sometimes, well, there's a family in there, or at least a daughter and her friends. I don't have a fancy paint booth and an airbrush, so I prefer to do my spray painting out of doors, which means weather that's dry and at least above freezing, not always a given in New England. So, for various reasons, sometimes I'm forced to put aside one project and work on another.
Do you think with the back of your mind sometimes, not really actively considering it, but somehow mulling it over in your sleep, so that one day the idea is delivered to your frontal lobes, fully developed? I do, particularly when something just doesn't look right. Right now, the scrapyard doesn't look right to me. I don't know what's wrong with it, but one day I'll wake up, walk into the train room and just know. Until then, well, that project is on hold.
And then, there are the repairs. They arrive at your workshop like a homeless waif in a Dickens novel, helpless and destitute on a snowy night. "All this tank car needs is an upgrade to Kadees," you tell yourself. But while you're there, it's not going to hurt to tune up the trucks with your MicroMark tool a bit, and as long as the wheelsets are out, why not weather the trucks frames? Yeah, you get it.
So, may it please the Court, I ask to be sentenced to time served in my train room, and then some. It's only fair.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
If only there were a NON-achievement Program for excuses, I would have collected lots of them.
Many would be the never-quite-started. Once upon a time, when about the only F-units made for N scale were F7s, I wanted a set of FTs. Then Concor came out with F3s- I think made originally my Fleishmann. I bought an undecorated set in 1975 with the idea of bashing them to FTs, if I every got some good plans and could figure out the skills and etc. to do it. I did do some Kadee conversions (when still called “Kadees”) but never did much more than test run them as undecs. Now I have a set of Intermountain FTs.
One that got started TWICE was the Blucher mansion. In 1976 or so, a club was building a replica of a section of Corpus Christi as it existing in 1926, and I wanted to replicate a famous old mansion. HO. Would be completely scratchbuilt- no commercial parts. I put about 200 hours into it. Never finished. Someone bought it unfinished but I don’t think he ever did anything more with it.
For an N layout in early 1990s, I mocked up the same mansion with the idea of building a real model someday. This time I would use parts and get it done.
Didn’t.
My N East Texas layout never got track wired to run the sawmill side of the layout.
Sometimes I start things that shouldn’t be started until something else is done.
For my new island Seaport layout, I started an ice making plant using the windowless side walls from two Pola “Machine Factory” kits. Stopped before adding the canopy bovver the truck dock.
But I won’t have a place on the layout for years. I am currently building the section from Harbor Drive back to the background. The ice plant will be a separate layout section in front.
So it is premature to be completing the ice plant now…
I cut PVC pipe and mocked up an export grain elevator headhouse in posterboard so I could see how it worked to paint background.
But until I lay track that will go into staging behind elevator, I can’t finalize the elevator.
My wife was throwing away mop head attachments that didn’t work and I converted them into two barrel-vault roofs for cargo sheds that will hide staging. (Only one shown)
In this case, I deliberately avoided even starting on the building proper… just stop after making the roofs.
I don’t have that excuse not to finish my pier nightclub. Just—other things to do…
Then there are the experimental projects that didn’t quite work
Trying to make an Arnold Rapido tankcar into one of Santa Fe ca. 1915 company-service tankcars—the ones Pecos River did so well it brass. Mine didn’t…
Trying to make a paired-window heavyweight coach (propbably PRR) into a wide-windowed ATSF heavyweight coach. Warped all out of shape.
Using chunks of 1970-vintage junker freightcars to attempt a T&P steel rebuild of single-sheathed car w W-section corner posts. The chunks just looked like chunks.
Carbon black covered hopper.
Someday…. some of it… will get done. Maybe.
Ah yes, the "Projects".
I have several. Just finished one--re-doing my engine servicing facility, and now I have to re-do my staging yard. Well, it's ALMOST done. And then since re-laying the staging yard just happened to cut off road access to the passenger station in Deer Creek, I'm in the midst of putting in a highway overpass across the tail end of the yard that ends in a down-ramp to the station parking lot. Thank God those Rix kits are easy to kit-bash, LOL!
And oh yes, I have to fill in planking on the house and main tracks in front of the station so that my passengers don't stumble and break a leg in case the passenger train stops on the main instead of the house track.
And I've STILL got mountains to finish, especially the 'back-side' of the Buttes and the pink Corning foam cliffs around Bullard's Bar reservoir. And trees to plant. Lots and LOTS of trees, this is the Tahoe National Forest in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.
And two raw brass lokies to paint and decal--if I can ever figure out how to get one of them apart. The screws that hold the boiler and cab on the frame are so tiny and so hidden that I'll need a magnifying glass just to FIND them, let alone un-screw them. So until I get that done, the Deer Creek switcher (a very cute little Key Rio Grande "583" 2-8-0) is shuffling cars around in the yard and the reflection off of the raw brass is blinding the crew.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
I only have one iron in the fire at the moment. It's called BUILD THE EMPIRE - and right at the moment it isn't even on the fire. The forge is cold and the bellows handles have a spider web between them...
Of course, there are a lot of subsets to that main project - a whole PERT chart full of them. (I have the chart and the mileposts, but no time scale!) Rather than use up a lot of bandwidth, I'll just mention unbuilt kits, un-laid tack, about 40 linear feet of shelf and narrow table benchwork...
So, what's the problem? Turns out that at the Accolade, just after dubbing him Sir Cedric, HM the King challenged the newest Defender of the Realm to choose and carry out a Quest. So Ced is going to have to travel back from 3623 to meet his father in the 20th century. (Every time I think I can tie off the novel and type The End, one of my characters throws a brick in the machinery!) At this rate, by the time I finish my speculative fiction will be current events.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - if I ever get this novel finished!)
tomikawaTT (Every time I think I can tie off the novel and type The End, one of my characters throws a brick in the machinery!)
(Every time I think I can tie off the novel and type The End, one of my characters throws a brick in the machinery!)
... and then with a flourish, and a small, wooden strike-anywhere match, Sir Cedric lit the fuse and then ran the forty or fifty paces back to the conveniently-located concrete bunker, and dived through the doorway just as the massive explosion rocked the last remaining brickwork plant on earth. That'll teach 'em, he muttered under his breath, to mess with a modern, ninja luddite. Bah, who needs machines anyway?
The End.
(You're welcome! Now get to work... )
Standard reason..."excuse"....life gets in the way...work... family...responsibility...home repairs...etc
Time...Talent...Knowledge...not to mention ambition have been the culprits in my quest to get where I want to be
I started a Cambell kit in the summer of 85. It was going ok and then I realize I was in over my head...clueless as to how to continue. I had built some plastic kits,but this was my first craftsman kit. I put it away until I acquired some better skills. Stuff always "looks easy" when you see them in an article, but...I continued my education in the hobby , and built mostly plastic freight car kits of growing complexity. I acquired the proper tools....learning all the way. DCC came out and I studied that too and took the plunge installing decoders and sound units... This hobby with it's many aspects can be time consuming....the laser kit folks have helped immensely in this area and this instructions and tips add to the ease of assembly....thank you Bar Mills for your tutorials
Finally returned to the Campbell creamery from 85 and now it is complete,,,or is it? Like so many other items I've built maybe it could use just a few more details to "complete" the scene....and so it goes...With retirement approaching and hopefully more time for the hobby...oh wait the car needs working on....and so the journey continues....no wonder RTR has become so popular...As for me, I have stock piled enough kits to keep me going for quite some time and now with the ability to do them...maybe even to completion.
I have dozens and dozens of projects underway all at once - for one very simple reason - It is a hobby and I work on which aspect of it I want, when I want, how I want - I only answer to myself.
And since I am very self disciplined in the rest of my life, model trains is an area where I do what I want, when I want, how I want - or not.
Sheldon
John,I guess I'm the oddball out..I have one project that is in the planing stage.. I don't start one till the one I am working on is finish.
Why?
Glad you ask..I have a small work bench and all projects must be finish before starting another or I would run out of room in a hurry.
Make no mistake I've had my fair share of doomed projects which gets cancelled and trashed instead of piling up.I do save some parts if possible.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Well, I may be another Odd ball.I am not overloaded with projects either. I have one locomotive that I need to troubleshoot for an intermittent DCC problem, and one structure kit going at the moment. I am also working on one layout electrical improvement project that will take one more day to complete and needs to be complete for my next operating session.My goal is to work on and complete the layout, but not on a schedule.However, I don't really complete all my structures right off. I get the walls up and the roofs on and get them painted. Then they go on the layout as place holders. Usually they are missing the details and the window frames. The reason behind this is I have become an operator and am holding regular operating sessions. I do have a plan of sorts. I want to get all the industries in, and a basic scenery layer done on all parts of the layout. Get all the wood benchwork and blue foam covered so I can get that semi finished look. Then I will come back and put the windows in the buildings, detail them, and finish the scenery around them.I have more than enough cars and locomotives on the layout, so no new car or locomotive projects for now. Any new car projects will consist of replacing some older not-so-detailed cars with better ones. They will be kits I suspect, because I do like building or doing actual modeling.
Elmer.
The above is my opinion, from an active and experienced Model Railroader in N scale and HO since 1961.
(Modeling Freelance, Eastern US, HO scale, in 1962, with NCE DCC for locomotive control and a stand alone LocoNet for block detection and signals.) http://waynes-trains.com/ at home, and N scale at the Club.
jwhitten tomikawaTT: (Every time I think I can tie off the novel and type The End, one of my characters throws a brick in the machinery!) ... and then with a flourish, and a small, wooden strike-anywhere match, Sir Cedric lit the fuse and then ran the forty or fifty paces back to the conveniently-located concrete bunker, and dived through the doorway just as the massive explosion rocked the last remaining brickwork plant on earth. That'll teach 'em, he muttered under his breath, to mess with a modern, ninja luddite. Bah, who needs machines anyway? The End. (You're welcome! Now get to work... ) John
tomikawaTT: (Every time I think I can tie off the novel and type The End, one of my characters throws a brick in the machinery!)
Would that it could be so easy! In fact, as of 3622, Earth has been uninhabitable (and uninhabited) for a millennium. Not to worry. There are some 600K planets with major or majority human populations, and about 2M more with human presence (Galactic Census Bureau, 3620 census data.)
To quote Sir Cedric's Godfather, "Any half-baked nitwit can destroy. It takes intelligence to build, and genius to create."
In the meantime, all of those, `How am I going to handle THIS???' questions have lined up in a neat row in a mental folder labeled Solved. The latest is a way to incorporate my very favorite prototype bridge, a beautiful concrete arch on a curve.
(If the truth be told, I'm waiting for the temperature in the garage to get temperate during my waking hours on a day when Nascar isn't running an afternoon race.)
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I only have two mrr projects, but they are BIG ones: Rebuilding my former layout, and changing my modeling era from 1990-95 to 1969-75. And of these, the layout rebuild takes priority - because I can't run any trains without it. So I have a bunch of locos and rolling stock sitting in storage, just waiting for paint and decals and, in some cases, to have decoders installed.
However, that thing called "life" has intruded on my hobby time as of late. Since it is summer, I have to spend a lot of time mowing my 1.5-acre lawn. Plus, my 91-year-old mother-in-law is too old to maintain her property, so that responsibility has fallen to my wife and me. And since I am in the middle of doing that necessary but most loathsome of mrr tasks, layout wiring - it's very easy for me to keep putting it off until tomorrow, or the next day, or the next....
-Ken in Maryland (B&O modeler, former CSX modeler)
tomikawaTT jwhitten: tomikawaTT: (Every time I think I can tie off the novel and type The End, one of my characters throws a brick in the machinery!) ... and then with a flourish, and a small, wooden strike-anywhere match, Sir Cedric lit the fuse and then ran the forty or fifty paces back to the conveniently-located concrete bunker, and dived through the doorway just as the massive explosion rocked the last remaining brickwork plant on earth. That'll teach 'em, he muttered under his breath, to mess with a modern, ninja luddite. Bah, who needs machines anyway? The End. (You're welcome! Now get to work... ) John Would that it could be so easy! In fact, as of 3622, Earth has been uninhabitable (and uninhabited) for a millennium. Not to worry. There are some 600K planets with major or majority human populations, and about 2M more with human presence (Galactic Census Bureau, 3620 census data.) To quote Sir Cedric's Godfather, "Any half-baked nitwit can destroy. It takes intelligence to build, and genius to create." In the meantime, all of those, `How am I going to handle THIS???' questions have lined up in a neat row in a mental folder labeled Solved. The latest is a way to incorporate my very favorite prototype bridge, a beautiful concrete arch on a curve. (If the truth be told, I'm waiting for the temperature in the garage to get temperate during my waking hours on a day when Nascar isn't running an afternoon race.) Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
jwhitten: tomikawaTT: (Every time I think I can tie off the novel and type The End, one of my characters throws a brick in the machinery!) ... and then with a flourish, and a small, wooden strike-anywhere match, Sir Cedric lit the fuse and then ran the forty or fifty paces back to the conveniently-located concrete bunker, and dived through the doorway just as the massive explosion rocked the last remaining brickwork plant on earth. That'll teach 'em, he muttered under his breath, to mess with a modern, ninja luddite. Bah, who needs machines anyway? The End. (You're welcome! Now get to work... ) John
After the dust settled Sir Cedric emerged from the bunker. "Well, time to get to work", he exclaimed to nobody in particular. Looking around he quickly surveyed the scene. The explosion had been big, but not big enough. He needed a new plan. He picked up a slate tile from the roof of the brickwork factory, which had landed remarkably intact practically at his feet. Nearby was a piece of chalk, embedded firmly into the side of a brick where it had been neatly planted, scorched but still servicable, from the high-velocity discharge like some piece of straw hurled through a tree trunk in a tornado. The observation was not entirely lost on Sir Cedric but he did not have time for such silly similes and instead broke off the bit of chalk and started sketching on the slate.
After a few minutes he looked up from his scribbling and looked around a moment. Then a slight smile crossed his face and he mused out loud-- "You know, it just might work..." Hurriedly, and with some excitement now, he turned the slate over and began performing some calculations... "3.141592653, well that's close enough...." he muttered under his breath. "...times the square root of 47" he again muttered, "...carry the one and multiply by six-- no seven..." he scribbled busily. After a bit he stopped his figuring and exclaimed "Yes, I think it just might work!" He looked up, noted the position of the sun and then raised his thumb toward the heavens and squinted down its path. "The angle's only approximate but it's the best I can do." he said finally, putting down the slate.
Working quickly now as there was not much time to spare, Sir Cedric gathered together the materials he needed to implement his plan. Luckily for him the old brick factory had had steel gutters which made all the difference. Rapidly but methodically he assembled the parts together into a long cylindrical tube fashioned from the pieces of guttering and lined with copper piping and the ignition coil from an ancient Chevy.... "Nice ride" he said. Then he picked out the guts from an old computer he found in the rubble, he momentarily wondered about the inscription which read "Intel Inside". Then he took it back where he wired it into his expanding contraption and finally to the terminals of the battery inside the Chevy.
Looking over his invention he nodded to himself with satisfaction. Now it was just a matter of hauling the rest of the rubble to his jury-rigged rail gun and getting it all launched before nightfall. According to his calculations the bricks would escape from the earth's gravity at approximately 11.2 kilometers per second heading toward the sun where the solar gravity well would capture them and slingshot them on a trajectory past the outer planets and out into deep space headed toward Betelgeuse toward a small planet orbiting a minor star in the Orion cluster. Where, if his calculations proved correct, the bricks would enter the atmosphere at a shallow angle where they would neatly reassemble themselves into a new home for lost and wayward Orachnibs, an ancient race of beings who have absolutely nothing in common with humans whatsoever.
Hauling his first load of bricks toward the rail gun Sir Cedric thought about his Godfather. Then he looked around at the enormous pile of rubble and said to himself, "Man, I sure hope that battery holds out."
(smirk!)
Nice try, John - but you'll never get there with out of date technology.
Battery? Who needs a battery when mass converters are available? And you should see the chick who patented the modification that made it impossible to jury-rig one into an impromptu conversion bomb! (Ms Galaxy 3543) Sir Cedric's wife is her great-granddaughter.
Simple recipe for successful science fiction. First you build a universe...
Meanwhile, back in the layout room, I actually went in and cleared the spiderwebs from the (supposedly) operable trackage today. Only one more week of Sumo...
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - occasionally)
There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.....
jwhitten So I'm curious about your unfinished projects... how many do you have? How long have they been sitting there waiting patiently for you to return? What do they need to get them finished up? (Is there any chance of it happening?? :-) Why do you think we start so many and take so long to finish 'em? Or-- maybe you don't.... maybe you're one of those rare few who has everything down to an art. Everything planned, everything proceeding apace... so how do you do it? What's your secret to getting stuff done? John
How many? ... More than I can count, and many have been waiting for years.
To work on them I need more time. There are too many non-model-railroad interruptions.
Why start so many? ... I am trying to build a layout, and there are very many elements in the process of doing that.
I do have everything planned for the most part, but each step is taking longer than expected.
The way to get stuff done on the layout is to put aside all the other stuff, and allocate plenty of time to the model railroad.
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
I appear to be one of the minority in this group. I work a project at a time, and I choose them based on my projected time to complete whatever it is. If it's November and the World Series is over, I figure I have about 12 weeks of uncommitted time, so I'll take on something big - like my concentric curved trestle project. If I have about a month, I'll pull out a Campbell kit; if I have a weekend, I'll do a Jordan Highway Miniatures kit; if I have an afternoon, I'll build a couple of trees or paint some people. Generally, summers are consumed with home upkeep, lawn care, vacations, etc., so my train hobby goes dormant until the first frost. I do a little model making during the baseball post-season, but my priority is the game.
This matching the project to the time available approach helps me to keep track of parts and it keeps me focused to completion.
I do keep quite a stock of project kits "waiting in the wings." I buy them at train shows and on eBay; I choose them based on how interesting they seem as a project, then I figure out how to work them into my layout after they are finished. For me, being organized and planning my time helps me to relax.
Phil, I'm not a rocket scientist; they are my students.
I may have a few hundred lying around...
Several locomotives need painting in my railroads colours
A few mills need putting together, then placement.
More trees
Some downtown buildings need redone in Williston and Exceda
Sims need a new switch...to replace nonswitching switch
I've been rethinking the actual spur for Thompson Mills #4 plant...as if...
mmmmmm...need I go on?
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/