The Little World

I don’t mean the ones that come to the modelling club wearing fishnet stockings and the basque. That’s only to be expected from some English migrants…Just don’t make eye contact.

No, I mean the modellers who elect to do something different with their hobby. Here’s some:

a. The person who researches completely obscure equipment that will never – ever – be offered as kits or parts. And proceeds to scratchbuild it. Here’s something never seen before…a diorama of Great Lakes clamshell ore unloaders modelled by someone here on the other side of the planet.

b. The modeller who makes something that cannot be kitted. The 1/72 scale aircraft carrier…

c. The modeller who elects to make a collection of variants of one particular device. I met a man with every example of a give-away plastic boat that had been common on the toy market years ago – he had formed his entire interest about it. One could but admire his enthusiasm…

There are all sorts of other pathways that might be taken – the builder who paints up every scheme that has ever been applied to a particular aircraft – building repeats of the same model over and over to carry the paint.

The person who is so fascinated by a certain battle that they build a tabletop version of it. If it is a big one, they can give away as much space as they have to it. I saw a model representation of the battle of Waterloo in a castle in southern England a few decades ago and the sheer size was staggering. If they are wargamers they can give a lifetime to recreating the armies and slowly refighting the day.

This is not an impossibility for air or sea battles as well – I know I favoured the Alnavco cast-metal 1:1200 scale ships in the 1980’s for just such a purpose and found other enthusiasts prepared to join in. I don’t think we ever fought a complete sea battle in all the years we gathered.

What if someone wanted to build one aircraft from every Air Force – do-able if you were able to get enough disparate sets of decals. Or a model of every type of plane used in a particular service. Again, nearly do-able…but they would be stretched to scratchbuilding in the end. Not that this would not be a good thing.

Or every plane that was used on a certain raid on a certain date…and the modeller could negotiate with the wholesaler for enough kits to do it… Hamburg? Coventry? Peenemünde? Ploesti?

I realise that most modellers will make a variable sweep through the hobby shop for their inspiration. And the eclectic builders and collectors will have as much fun as anyone else. But I do admire the focused sorts – they are their own men and women.