RIP Sammy cat.

 

There are some days which are not so good. Saturday was one of those days. Sammy cat, who has featured in previous posts, was diagnosed back in October 2020 with a mass growth in his mouth. He was given a few weeks to live. He defied all odds and without pain or suffering as far as we can tell survived for nearly 10 months. On Friday he was fine in the morning and demolished his breakfast. By lunchtime he had hidden himself away and by the evening Mrs. Woody and myself knew we had to make a decision and that was to be kind before he really began to suffer.

We don't know much about Sammy's early life as like most of our fleet of cats he was a rescue cat. He had a fantastic personality and a call which sounded like he was saying Hello. He used to do that a lot when he carried a catnip sock in his mouth. We buried him, with all our other departed cats, under our apple tree with that sock. He also had a habit of jumping in the empty bath tub when I was cleaning my teeth. I had to turn the cold tap on and he would go to the other end of the bath and start digging! 

In his latter years he became very friendly and despite what some people may find horrifying, it was not unusual for him to go to sleep in the middle of the bed. He did take up some room and had a rumbling purr that resounded through the mattress but was that comforting throb that sent you to sleep. He often beat the alarm clock and had a persuasive way of getting you up to get his breakfast. 

When I say he had 'clicky' ears other cat owners will know what I mean. Cats love their ears being stroked and generally rubbed. Sammy's ears 'clicked' when you did that.

He will be sadly missed by both Mrs Woody and me. Unfortunately we have lost a cat a year for the past three years so I am hoping that for at least a few years we may stay lucky with our remaining fleet. However, as with all such matters, the sun went down yesterday and rose this morning and the World continues but just a little bit differently for Mrs. Woody, me and Sammy's cat friends.

Building big and little kits.

The WMD on the road tour continued today with a trip to Wollaton Hall near Nottingham. Mrs Woody wanted to see the T Rex exhibition where the first full T Rex skeleton (named Titus) to be shown in the UK since the early 1900s is on show. I told her I was not going to be compared to a dinosaur as she might not actually see any differences and they might not let me out thinking I am an exhibit! However we still went and it was very good and I was not detained. Had a long chat with one of the attending experts who had various facts at her fingertips that answered all my non-sensical questions. A look round the rest of the Hall saw us in The Salon, a room which was used as a set in the 2012 Bat Man film The Dark Knight Rises. 

Now this would make a classy modelling work area and you could hide away your kit and pretend things were tidy by pulling down the roller top.

We then had a look round the formal gardens with views across the very large park and lake where many families were enjoying a day out just like before the pandemic. There is even an archeological dig going on in the grounds (click here for details) where a gentleman explained to us all that was going on and we then drifted off onto the subject of the USA and their history at which point he revealed he had been a Sherriff's Deputy for some time in one state!   

Now to the building big kit part of this post. Without wishing to offend paleontologists (which means I am probably now on their most wanted list after another T Rex ) the World over, their craft has similarities to model making, just on a big scale! They in effect find a big kit of bones and then put them together to make their kit come alive. I have to admire them though as there are no plans, no painting guide and if a part is missing you can't just write off to the manufacturer asking for a replacement! Getting a replacement part is one thing I have been considering with my little kit build of the MiniArt T-80 Russian Light Tank. As you may recall the kit stalled back in April and part of the reason were the tracks. They fell apart in my hands and were a nightmare to assemble and I am still not sure if I have enough intact parts left to finish the necessary track lengths hence possibly writing to MiniArt. For some reason that I really have no idea of I pulled the box with the parts out last night and started again with the tracks. They are still a nightmare but I have made some progress. I think a little at a time is how I will proceed but this could all still end up in the never to be touched again pile of kits!

WMD out and about!

Mrs Woody is off this week which gives me the opportunity to leave WMD HQ and go and visit a few places. Following the various restrictions and general desire to stay safe going out is still very much a novelty. It is strange to be in places where there are other people in large numbers and it is almost a case of reacclimatising yourself to those types of situations that we just did up until 18 months ago.

Monday was a trip to the coast not that the weather was inviting but never the less we saw the sea! Tuesday Mrs Woody went off to a spa day with a friend of hers whilst I took the opportunity to have a 27 mile bike ride with good friend, fellow modeler and artist Mr Beecham. Always a good ride with plenty of chat on a variety of topics and we even found this on our travels.

Many of the old K6 Classic Phone Boxes have been bought by Parish Councils and whilst many have become libraries or a place to house a defibrillator some have become used for some very novel purposes such as this with its flower display. Hmmm. Wonder if that would fit in the garden??? Certainly make an interesting model on a modern day model railway layout.

Near to home we stopped for a refreshment stop which was the £3.50 lunch at a local CoOp, other lunch deals are available! I thought I had done well with a BLT, Pepsi and a Wispa duo chocolate bar. Having made our purchases and no doubt swelled the days takings for the CoOp, we sat outside on the bench kindly provided by said purveyor of lunch deal. The bench was actually made out of plastic molded to look like wooden slats and sitting down you could tell the sun had warmed it well - lovely! As I tucked into my BLT from the comfort of my heated seating area, I placed my Wispa Duo beside me on the bench looking forward to that moment of chocolate indulgence. The BLT was great and reaching down for the Wispa I found this.

Yes! I should have really thought the storage arrangements for the Wispa through a bit more! Far from being the chocolate delight I had hoped for it had turned, in the heat of the sun and the radiant warmth of the bench slats, into a liquid flat pack! I did take it home and refrigerated it for several hours but to be honest it was not the same when I ate it and it had lost its duo status to become as one! For some reason Mr Beecham found it all very amusing!

Todays jaunt out was to the National Trust property Belton House in Lincolnshire. One of the flag ship properties (never sure how a house can be a flag ship but there you are) of the Natuonal Trust and very popular today. The house and surrounding properties are fantastic and the gardens and grounds wonderful. 

There is even something a little cheeky in the grounds!

A sandwich and hot sausage roll from the cafe took care of lunch and near to there were the gift shop and second hand book shop. There is something about a second hand book shop that I find difficult to resist so whilst Mrs Woody searches through the crime/mystery murder section (I still ask myself if I should be worried!) I take a look at the more technical sections especially on transport. Todays finds were these two for the princely sum of £6 for the two. 

 

I lived on Malta for several years at a time when the buses were painted multi colours (some photos in a YouTube video here) and were basically locally coach built bodies on lorry chassis which resulted in a fascinatingly unique transport system. From what I can gather when Malta joined the EU they had to upgrade the buses in 2011 and at one point had ex London Transport bendy buses. Many of the old buses were scrapped but there are a number still kept and now serve with a vintage bus tour company. I am always fascinated by the railways of Ireland so the book on the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway should be a good read.

In amongst all the above I have done some model making with the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck. Not a great deal but it has the start of wheels which I guess is important for a truck to have! No doubt the 1/35th scale troops will think that getting their truck mobile will be 'wheely' great! Sorry! Couldn't resist that awful joke. However I had to have some laughter as at one stage I did have brake cylinders on the wrong way round but after a lot of head scratching, in-depth consultation with the plans, a further contribution to the swear jar and the consumption of a refrigerated former liquid flat pack Wispa Duo it all came right! This is what things are looking like now.

 Its getting there!

On the 009 gauge model railway layout front, I think I may have come up with a cunning way to realign the track without having to buy a new point but more on that another time.

Small steps towards the finish.

 

Its at this stage in the build of a relatively complex kit such as this Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck (there are 474 parts) that things slow down a bit. You need to start painting parts of the kit which will be difficult to do so if the kit were fully assembled and then bring sub-assemblies together giving time for both paint and glue to dry properly and only then can the next stage of the build take place. It can be frustrating but patience is the key word. Try to rush or take a short cut and the chances are it will go wrong. How do I know? Because I write from bitter experience. I have tried in the past to rush and nine times out of ten regretted it and made large scale deposits to the swear jar as well as causing damage to the model being built. 

The current example of being patient is that before I can go much further with the cab I need to add the steps either side. I have not added these before as they are fragile and I wanted to lessen the chance of damaging them by fixing them in position as late in the build as I can. There are only three parts to each step but they are small and need time for the glue to harden properly in order that they stand the best chance of surviving intact during the rest of the build. 

As I spent most of what was a wet Sunday sorting out an ever increasing pile of household paperwork I only had time to construct the steps this evening. However to bring this post towards a conclusion, they are indeed small steps towards the finish! I don't just throw this blog together you know, it took me at least two minutes to think up the title of this post!  

On the musical front, for the past few days working on the model I have been listening to compilation tapes in the 'Now that's what I call music' series. Started in the mid 1980's here in the UK, the format has lasted well. I started with the original album which was just called 'Now that's what I call music' and then started collecting them as they appeared up to about 'Now that's what I call music 42' so I have plenty more listening pleasure in stock. Looking at Google I see the series is still going and is now at 'Now that's what I call music 109' but the music just isn't like it used to be! Oh hum! I do sound old!

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'. 

A Great Day!

All days are good but sometimes there is a day which you will remember and today was  one of those days.

Was it because of my 20 mile bike ride this morning? Well it was a good 20 mile ride and I returned home relatively in breath!

Was it because I cleaned the kitchen and the floor was clean enough to eat your dinner off. Well Mrs Woody was impressed and the cats actually do tend to end up eating their dinner off the floor once they have pulled it out from the feeding dishes so they will be impressed too.

Was it because I have managed some more progress with the Zvezda K5350 Mustang truck kit and got the body sides glued together? Well it is coming together nicely.

 All these were good but the highlight of the day which made it a great day was a trip to the Rock by Rails museum in Rutland and you can find all the details on their website by clicking here. It was my first time to a railway attraction since my last model railway exhibition in February 2020 so it was a bit special. I was lucky enough to be accompanied by a good friend Mr Bliss who had a long career with British Rail dealing with Permanent Way matters so talk to and from as well as at the museum was very much focused on railway matters and I learnt a lot in a few hours. 

I will let the photos below do the talking with a few notes where necessary.

Phil Parker from British Railway Modelling magazine built the Hornby Family Fun Layout and he donated it to the museum where it is located in the cafe and it is a great piece of modelling showing how what in effect is a train set becomes a model. Details on his blog - click here.

Makes you want to go and buy the Hornby model.

Strangely we had talked about dealing with mining subsidence and having to literally jack the track back into a level plane on our way to the museum and whilst not dealing with subsidence they are jacking some track level on site so I knew exactly what was going on

An unusual use for a cement mixer. Used to clean and sort ballast. 

The old loco shed from Harston in Leicestershire rebuilt at the museum where a lot of restoration work is now carried out including the steam loco below stripped to its boiler.

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On operational days rides down the line are provided in these brake vans.

Steam loco Belvoir awaiting restoration.

I didn't know that this existed and as there is a family connection with the war in the Far East this was a poignant moment for me.

Always good to see some humour and this loco is obviously used for novices to learn on with the L plate!

Some diggers as well.

The cab from a massive excavator used to mine ironstone in the area.

Love to have this in my garden but I think Mrs. Woody would draw the line at that plonked on the front lawn!

If only I could drive it home that would be the perfect ending to a great day! 

I will be back probably on one of the operational days. The place just oozes with atmosphere and nostalgia. Well worth a visit and after Covid places such as theses need all the custom and support they can get.