Category: Model trains
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What’s A Success In Scale Modelling?
Depends – and on a number of factors. Firstly there’s the modeller. Some are dedicated, some are casual. For some it is a hobby – for others, real life. The intense modeller may set higher goals for themselves than the person who treats it lightly. Then there’s the intent. If someone sets out to tell…
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” I’m Just Going To Buy A Paintbrush “
I won’t be in the hobby shop long. I won’t look at any new kits. Or tools. Or range of paints. Or die-cast models. I won’t spend much money. I don’t really need anything. I’ll only browse. Just window shopping. Home in fifteen minutes. You’ll never guess what happened…
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Take Your Little Light With You
Everywhere. You may not find an honest man, but you could encounter sympathetic modellers. This seemed to be the case for the chap who took his Japanese trains layout and a selection of locomotives to an unlikely venue; the South Perth annual exhibition for the WA Miniatures Association. Doll houses, tiny shops, and hobbit houses…and…
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Disloyalty Is Not Allowed
Modellers are required to decide which nation in the Little World they will belong to and will not be allowed to emigrate to another. If you build plastic aircraft you will not be allowed to make wooden ships or doll houses. If you run trains you are not allowed to look up in the sky.…
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Do Or Die-orama?
Is your little world being made around your ideas, or are your ideas being made around those of the retail trade? For some modellers – the model engineers in particular and to some extent the R/C model boaters – they are in control of their desires. Both groups make what they like…and spend a very…
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Modelling True To Yourself
Relax – there will be no hippie touchy-feely stuff. I’ve written before about trying out different types of modelling to see what you most enjoy. A car, a ship, an airplane, a rocket, and a tank give you a broad look at what is out there. Okay, there are trucks and figures and trains as…
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The Multi-Talented Modellers
Some of us are good at one thing – some at another. But the infuriating sorts are good at everything. One of the new chaps at my studio club brought along some figures he’s painted for a diorama. They are done very well, which is one point, but they are also printed from 3D files…
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The Specialty Wagon
Someone, somewhere, built special cars to transport any unlikely thing you can imagine. The LNER had fish vans, the NP had silk trains, and presumably the EFOM had tonky little coffee vans. You can buy potash cars that say ” Saskatchewan ” and presumably surprise your friends. I get my surprise looking a the odd…
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How Many?
And how would one ever find out? I have been amazed at the number of firms that make plastic scale model kits. I knew of perhaps eight when I was a kid – and some of them have long disappeared – but they have been replaced in the shops with what may be hundreds more.…
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When You Are The Only Person In A Shop
You start to wonder about the viability of the place. This may certainly be the case when you go at an odd time of the day – say they open 24/7 and it is 3:00 AM. But if it’s noon on Tuesday, you have to wonder at empty aisles. Prices can do it. Inflation and…
The Little World 