The Little World

No, you came here yesterdio…*

Well, I am going to have a model, instead of a pile of parts in a box. It has been staring me out of countenance for three years and I am finally getting to grips with it. And as these things go, the grip gets just that little bit more ambitious.

The depiction of Uncle Jack’s car that was has more of a story to it than just a box model. It is the story of a time, place, and attitude of mind. It needs accessories to complete the scene, and someplace to see them – so I think it is going to have to become that most dreaded of productions – the diorama. I say dreaded, because I am not that long on display room in my studio and it is getting crowded.

That fact is going to lead me to do some thinking – it’s no good going and getting a vast MDF baseboard and reproducing half of Montana on it to show the car. It would be lovely but impossible to store. I am going to have to be sensible and measure out the display place before I make the board – and then plan the model on the board with a backdrop behind it. As the most likely place it will finish up is the IKEA Billy shelves, I think that size will be the basis for the plan.

Restricting? Yes. But then so are some of the British OO gauge railway layouts I see at their annual exhibition, with their shuttle-back-and-forth single track on a baseboard. Given the right backdrop, some of them can create an atmosphere of total reality. And that with cardboard houses…

*  Old Australian joke.