When things don't go according to plan but don't get too obsessed with detail!

The bit about detail in the title to this post relates to the second part of this post so we will begin about things not going according to plan. 

On Friday I laid out some track on my new second baseboard for my 009 narrow gauge layout. I had in my mind a long held plan that I had gone over mentally many times to the point I was convinced it was infallible and had bought the necessary track and points on the basis that nothing could go wrong. How wrong I was! In my mind the canal wharf is served by a siding that comes off the curve at what I term as the front of the layout. This is the side where on the first board the quarry face is. Laying the track out soon made it clear that the siding that in my mind ran at the side of  the wharf actually by-passed it on a curve before straightening up once almost past the wharf. Hardly conducive to efficient loading from railway wagons to canal barges and vice versa. The siding actually needs to come off the curve at the back of the layout. that does present a problem. At the moment I don't have the additional left hand Peco Set-Track point that is needed. I either have to order one, see if I have an n gauge Set-Track point in my stock and butcher it in a similar fashion to one on the other board - see the blog entry here- or devise some cunningly creative new track layout that only uses the existing points I have. I will sleep on that for a night or two which actually means more sleepless nights counting points! The photo below probably shows the issue better than my words describe it.

This evening I had an hour or so doing some detail painting on the Zvezda 5350 Mustang truck kit manly on the bottom of the cargo body and a bit in the cab which I photographed for inclusion here. Photographs can be very useful as they can highlight something that the naked eye looking at the model misses, such as a twisted or damaged part. They can also be a problem in that digital photography can provide a harshness of detail not necessarily seen with the naked eye. Normally what you see with the naked eye is a level of detail that is satisfactory and you are happy with it. Take a digital photograph and with the right resolution you can focus in on parts of a model that the naked eye just cannot see normally and suddenly you see blurred overpainted areas on the model which you want to amend because on the photo it looks terrible. What you have to get your mind round is whether anyone is really going to look at the model with a digital camera or high powered magnifying glass. If you are happy with what you see with your naked eye view than be happy with the model and do not spend hours trying to correct slight painting issues that others will not see any way. In addition if you weather your model the likelihood is that all that painting will disappear under a layer of weathering powders anyway. Enough of the lecture - lets see some in close photos to see just how bad my painting is but the important part is that I am happy with how it looks to my eye so it ain't getting any more painting just some weathering which will cover a lot of 'issues'.