The Little World

For every model built – for every Little World commenced – for every article purchased in a hobby shop…there is an impulse. Something triggers off what may be a very long and expensive sequence of events. What can it be?

a. The memory of an experience – a car you owned, a place you visited, a plane you once saw. You want to rekindle that memory and enlarge upon it – by miniaturising it. That’s an anomaly, but you can get good plastic anomaly kits these days.

Hardly anyone makes a model of a bad experience. A plane that you were aboard when you became exceedingly ill and had to be sponged down in the toilets. A car that lost its suspension two hundred miles from the nearest garage. A railway station where you were accosted by vagabonds. We may remember the occasions but we don’t want to do it in 1:76 scale.

b. The desire to have something that we will never have. In other people this might lead to a life of burglary or politics, but for the scale modeller it acts as a spur to make a model of the desired object. Mostly these turn out to be fancy aeroplanes or motor cars, and in the more repressed Asian cultures, scale models of women.

Those same repressed cultures will not allow their citizens to have firearms but there is a good trade in replica models that can be built from kits.

I am surprised that there is not a bigger trade in scale models of money – after all, it ranks as the most desirable of commodities for many people.

c. The sheer aesthetics of something. There are motor cars that come into the class of works of art – also some aeroplanes. Yachts can be very desirable for their appearance. If you cannot have the big one, you can get some of the pleasure from the small one.

d. The desire to know. I have seen models of stationary steam boilers and engines that were so well done as to finally instruct me in the actual workings of the things. I have purchased a Chinese model of a Bedford lorry that was so well-made that I felt that I had assembled the real thing. I did not begrudge the money or the time spent – I know my way around that Bedford and didn’t bust a knuckle doing it.

e. The desire to win. The contest builder is the one who buys the fabulous model and adds the fabulous aftermarket accessory packs and then spends the fabulous amount of time on it. It is a pity that there can be several of these people in every contest, because someone has to lose. We can only hope that they lose fabulously…

f. The need to keep busy. Some people feel this more than others, and chafe at any inactivity. I am one. I need to be doing something all the day long – building, writing, reading, or travelling. Scale model building can be expanded to fill any spare gaps in the hours.

g. The need to collect. Of course this fundamental human characteristic can be satisfied with matchbooks, fine china, or rental properties, but the scale model collection is one of the finest ways to get this down while satisfying other urges. It rarely harms other people in the doing.

h. The social need. The lone builder may not have much of this, but if they go to a show or join a club, they can have as much sociability and help as they want. I know – I’ve joined a modelling club and even in early days I can feel it doing me good. Not everyone knows everything, but everybody knows something…and if you listen, you learn.

Note that I have left out any commercial considerations – earning money by making models or selling them. There are people who do this, and good luck to them – but as soon as you try to do the thing on a commercial basis you will either make money or lose it – and the focus will shift from enjoyment to success. You’ll need a new hobby to recover from the strain of the old one.