Back to reality!

Well what can you say other than the England Team did us proud in the Euros! Penalty shoot outs are not my favoured way of  dealing with a draw and for what its worth a points system of some sorts might actually be better. If it included a recognition for sporting behavior it might actually discourage some of the almost rugby type activities that go on in football today. 

Enough of my thoughts and back to reality! Reality today is that back at WMD HQ we are again sticking bits of plastic together! Yes a kit is underway! I have had a growing itch for some weeks now to actually start building models again after what seems an eternity of garden and similar type activities. Looking back through the blog (which was part of the reason I started this blog in the first place so I could put dates to things and events and it works - Wow!) I see it was the end of March that I last progressed with a kit - the T85 from Miniart. I could have gone back to this kit but if you recall I had almost stalled with the tracks which have some issues. Since moving most of my modelling stuff from within the house to my man cave AKA the Room of Gloom that kit has sat in a box and to be honest I thought about starting it again, I even looked through the box but at the moment its just not doing it for me. So with another breaking of my New Years Resolution of not buying any more kits, I bought the  Zvezda Russian K5350 Mustang 3-Axle Truck in 1/35 scale. The Kamaz Мустанг (Mustang) is a family of general military utility trucks with numerous variants which is based on the 1st generation KamAZ family launched in the early 1980s. A three-person cab is standard across the Mustang range. It has a sleeping berth and tilts forward for engine access. The cab can be fitted with an add-on armour kit. I have wanted to build a Kamaz truck for a long time. They are typical Russian in that they are simple but very robust. If you have ever watched Ice Road Truckers you know that in Canada and Alaska they run trucks on ice roads in the winter. It is also the same in Russia but having watched some videos on the conditions they have to deal with I have to say they do need a really tough truck - have a look at this short You Tube Video to see or just put in Russian Ice Road Truckers into YouTubes search engine.  

First time with a Zvezda kit and looking through the box it looks stunning. Will it look as stunning once my hands have been on it or will it end up a glue bomb once completed? We'll have to wait and see! The kit itself comes in a stout cardboard box which is sleeved by an outer cover with the illustrations showing the truck in action. Inside the parts are all in plastic bags so no loose, flying off into oblivion never to be seen again as the box is opened parts. I like that! The instructions and painting guide look as though some one has actually thought about what to illustrate and hopefully will actually aid building this kit rather than becoming a cryptic set of clues which have several differing answers according to how you look at them! I like that too! Looking at the parts themselves the detail is stunning and having built a few 1/25th truck kits in my time I just wish those larger kits had this sort of level of detail. You guessed it I like that as well! So far the guys at Zvezda have struck a chord with me.

Starting the actual build the first stages centre around the engine. For something that will probably end up mostly hidden the detail is remarkable. There is also something else I like about this kit. So far all the parts for the engine are on the same sprue and amazingly just about all the parts follow on from each other. I have started with Sprue G and it starts at the bottom with part G1 and G2 is next to it and so on. There are a couple of exceptions to fit the part into the overall sprue where a part number does not follow on but its close. If you have never built a kit you may wonder why the excitement of  what probably sounds a logical way of doing things. Logical it maybe but I have never come across a sprue laid out like this. Normally you end up with the parts for something like an engine over two or more sprues and the parts are laid out randomly to minimise the number of sprues. You end up spending ages looking over the sprue trying to find the part that you want. Zvezda make it so simple to find the part. G65 is between G64 and G66! 

Moving on from my overstated joy about this kit, an hour and a half got the first three stages of the engine done.

How do I know that it took me an hour and a half to reach this stage? Well here at WMD HQ we do like our music and have done so for many, many years. Before the advent of new technology, MP 3 files,  downloading, streaming and probably a whole host of other things I don't and probably never will know about we had vinyl, cassettes and CDs. WMD HQ still has a large collection of them all and facilities in the Room of Gloom include a cassette player on which both sides ('You mean you had to physically turn it over?' will probably be the reaction of some) of a favorite cassette purchased in the early 90s was playing whilst I built the engine. Roughly 45 minutes a side which gives me 90 minutes and unlike the football yesterday I didn't go into extra time!

A great easy listening album full of fantastic music which if you are interested is: -

A1	Eagles–	One Of These Nights
A2	The Doobie Brothers–	Long Train Runnin'
A3	Fleetwood Mac–	Little Lies
A4	Hall & Oates*–	I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)
A5	Greg Kihn Band–	Jeopardy
A6	Starship (2)–	Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now
A7	Christopher Cross–	Ride Like The Wind
A8	Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers*–	Breakdown
A9	The Cars–	Drive
B1	R.E.M.–	The One I Love
B2	Lynyrd Skynyrd–	Sweet Home Alabama
B3	Allman Brothers Band*–	Jessica
B4	Rickie Lee Jones–	Chuck E's In Love
B5	Joe Walsh–	Rocky Mountain Way
B6	J. J. Cale*–	Hold On Baby
B7	Timbuk 3–	The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
B8	Steve Earle–	Copperhead Road
B9	America (2)–	Horse With No Name

Bridge to Nowhere!

There has continued to be a lack of posts on this blog and its all to do with lighter evenings and summer weather! Although some may question the summer weather bit, the odds are that I will be outside doing something rather than inside in front of a computer screen as I try to make the most of the light warm (!?!?) evenings. Hence the lack of posts but there are things being done, usually with the garden, which continues to demand attention! 

However this week has seen a few days out which given the past 18 months mainly spent at home in the WMD HQ is something nice to do. For some reason we ended up in north Lincolnshire so Mrs Woody was treated to a fascinating trip across the Humber Bridge at a cost of £1.50 for the toll and a CoOp £3.50 lunch deal of sandwich, crisps and drink - other lunch deals are available! This was consumed on what remains of the Viewing Point car park on the north shore which didn't have any view of the bridge as most of the rest of it has been turned into a Covid Vaccination Centre. Having consumed the gastronomic delight, a further £1.50 secured a return trip south bound across the bridge. The Humber Bridge has always been somewhat controversial and was nick named The Bridge to Nowhere. I am not into the politics of it all, its been built, it serves a purpose but most of all it is a fantastic engineering feat and stunning to look at.

Having crossed back to the south shore we ended up parking at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust car park at Far Lings which is located in an area of ponds that were created by clay being dug out for the local clay tile factory which is now a museum. There is a path along the shore and it all looks very interesting for a longer visit. 

You can do a bit of ship spotting too!

The path passes the back of the tile works which look as though it could be an interesting visit but what really caught my eye was the boundary wall to the site made out of stacked clay tiles.

Meanwhile back at WMD HQ and specifically The Room of Gloom, some progress on My Last Great Project has been made. Slowly track is being sorted as the plans in my mind become a physical reality. However, as many railway modelers will admit, once some track is down the temptation to run some trains is overwhelming and I have to admit to doing that myself. 

A recent purchase was a Hornby Railroad Tornado with TTS sound from Bure Valley Model Railways in Norfolk. £102 bought this and it is a fantastic runner with a smooth slow running capability and a fantastic set of sounds. For the money it is simply stunning!

Something bought some time ago was this Bachmann Class66 with DCC Sound and a set of 10 Hornby Seacow wagons and a Shark break van. I have only got five of the Seacows out but the whole train looks and runs brilliantly.

I am going to have to get my mind set back into track work and you never know the layout may end up with its own Bridge to Nowhere! However, I have to admit that running the trains has been a great deal of fun and that is what a hobby is all about! 

Rain starts play!

That is right in my case - rain did start play for me. Let me explain. 

The last few weeks has been somewhat busy with other non modelling activities. At the beginning of June I had a Cataract operation which was a consequence of the treatment for my my detached retina which happened last April. My admiration and gratitude to the NHS here in the UK is overwhelming. Their care and treatment, especially at a time when covid has made things much more complex for the NHS, was superb and they saved mine as well as countless other peoples sight.

The good weather and light evenings of the last few weeks has also meant that I have spent a great deal of time continuing to landscape the garden and sort out the accumulated junk that I have horded over the past decades. Two trips to the scrap yard this week saw me take 450 kg of scrap metal to weigh in and a bewilderment as to why I had kept such junk for so long! Anyway the landscaping is done (mostly) and I now have an easier to maintain garden and hopefully something that looks better!

Hmmm! You could build a garden railway along that wall! 

Smudge the cat seems to be surveying the possibility!

One of those things that I had to do with landscaping the garden was to level off the lawn to the same level as the edging blocks that I laid. Mostly this involved lowering the lawn. If like me trying to cut a turf to a consistent depth turns out to be impossible with what emerges on the end of the spade being more cheese wedge shaped then flat bread, you will understand the problems of having to relay turfs which all have different depths to them. years ago I would have re-laid the turf and belted hell out of it with the back of the spade to get it to some resemblance of  level and then wonder why it died! As I get older such energetic activities are now beyond sensibility so with a bit of thought I created a turf cutting plank. I had an off cut of laminate flooring to which I nailed three pieces of inch and a half batten. The picture below shows it as well as the general idea of how to get consistent level turfs using an old and expendable saw riding along the top of the battens to cut off the surplus soil. You won't be using the saw for any form of woodworking again but it certainly made relaying the turfs much easier! The laminate floor is about the same width as my small spade which made cutting the turfs to the right width easy as well. Working smarter not harder as I get older! 

The good weather has now however broken and as with all UK summers the rain has arrived! This however has given me the chance to move myself into the dry of The Room of Gloom and make some progress on the Last Great Project which is my 00 gauge model railway and in effect start to play! The four segments of the baseboard are now bolted together with some M12 bolts and large penny washers to spread the load.

If I were organised or had some common sense I would have a hard copy track plan of what I was going to do. However I don't have hard copy but I do have in my mind the basic concept. As with most of my projects I know the basic concept I then work out the details as I go along. It may not be the best way but it works for me! So at the moment I have pieces of track laid out in roughly the layout I want it and it is now a case moving pieces about until the optimal layout appears. 

Apparently its going to be raining for a few days yet so rather than stop my play more progress may actually be made!

More on the small scale!

Following the last post on the Revell 1/76 Panzer II Ausf. F I thought I would show the Revell Kfz. 70 Krupp Protze & 3,7cm Pak I built in 2013. similar to the Panzer kit it was built, painted and weathered in a few enjoyable evenings.

 

Size isn't everything!

 

I normally do things big! 'Make it large' as the fast food chains like to entice you. Its the same with models. put a 1/76th scale kit and a 1/35th or even a 1/25th in front of me and its almost certain I will go for the biggest scale. Why? I don't know. Maybe its the cost thing in that for not a lot more with some kits you get a model four times the size with more parts, more detail and a big presence. 

However, I have been known to build small kits and on looking back through some of my models I remember enjoying making them as they were relatively quick to build and to be frank although my eyes are not as good as they were, there is still a fair amount of detail. The model pictured at the start of this post is the Revell 1/76 Panzer II Ausf. F complete with a basic diorama setting. Back in about 2015 it cost me £5 from Hobby Craft (there was a branch near my office and after a bad morning I would walk there and see if there were any bargains - very stress relieving!) I recall I built, painted and weathered it in about four or five evenings and it was very enjoyable and it looks good - or I think it does! Size isn't always the most important thing!

On other fronts, work on damaging my back continues as the garden revamp continues but hopefully the end is in sight! Wall building at the moment dodging the belated April showers that have arrived in May!

When all this is finished it will hopefully be back to some full on model making!

Turning my back on model making or just getting a bad back?

More about the model in the picture above in a moment. I thought I needed to start with a image of a model just to prove that this blog is mainly about model making! The model may have turned its back to me but I haven't turned my back on modelling although the back does ache! 

The lack of any posts to this blog over the last week however does mean that model making activities are on the back burner at the moment. My life at the moment appears to be centered around a major garden revamp and cycling. I am up to 1762 miles this year which is good going for me. Garden wise, its not the biggest out their but big enough for me and Mrs W's needs and still provides a shed load of work at the moment. Yesterdays escapades in involved moving 7 Yorke stone slabs about 4 foot long, one foot wide and 4 inches deep. No way of weighing them but I guess somewhere about 75 to 100 kg. Move those around for a while and no need for a gym session! The day before digging a 25 foot long, 18 inch deep trench through clay to put a power cable into the Room of Doom. There is probably another 2 to 4 weeks of work left depending on weather, what hidden problems I find and how my back stands up to it all!

Now back to the model! It is a Italeri R620 Scania Atelier that I built back in 2010. The kit was probably the start of Italeri producing various customised versions of their Scania kit. The kit is inaccurate in a number of areas including having the wrong rear hubs but as there are a lot of Scania fans in Europe it has always been a good seller despite its short comings. 

I built the kit out of the box apart from putting a couple of airlines on. The bodywork was sprayed Humbrol metallic green with silver mixed into it. The issues with the kit were that some of the decals broke up on wetting so I ended up having to make do with what stayed intact. Whilst Italeri decals are nice and thin this does mean that they are prone to breaking up when they are wetted to separate them from the backing sheet. There are solutions that you can get to cover the decal before wetting it to strengthen it but I did not expect an issue with a kit that was only a year or so old. The other issue was trying to get the pivot pins in to connect the cab to chassis. I failed! I do remember it seeming to be an impossible task and I gave up before I damaged the model. At least the cab can be lifted straight off the chassis to see the engine! 

Pictures below taking me back to 2010 when my back didn't ache as much! Oh well back to more digging but I have not turned my back on model making!

Projects of Joy and Woe!

 A bit thin on blog entries at the moment. Not because things are not busy for me but more that not a lot of the business has included model making. There are times like that and I am lucky this year so far in that I have spent more time on model making in the first four months of the year than probably in the previous four years!

At the moment there is a large project of redoing the garden. I am not a highly skilled creative gardener and my results are more likely to feature in a guide on how not to do your garden rather than be showcased at the Chelsea Flower Show. However I enjoy it and that is what that matters and hence the Project of Joy! At the moment work is centered around some hard landscaping and laying paving blocks is taking much time up. I do find this sort of thing very therapeutic. There is something about bringing mortar and blocks together that fascinates me! I can understand why Winston Churchill enjoyed brick laying as a hobby and there is a lot of information about this aspect of his life here.. My work is probably a shadow of his but progress is being made. As an aside getting materials, especially cement is proving a problem. I am told that there was a fire at a large cement works which has caused major issues. I had to travel 60 plus miles to actually get a couple of bags!

Moving onto the Project Of Woe or as I will call it the POW, this is a tale that typifies my modelling! Back in 2016 I bought a Bachmann Baldwin in 009 gauge in War Department grey as used in World War 1. Great model so a couple of wagons to match were bought. 

Then the idea that being the time of the Centenary of WW1 it would be good to build a small layout with a WW1 theme. By about August 2018 I finally got round to starting the layout! No worries - a couple of months will see it done! Wind on to the present and there is the start of the layout and a series of problems that have dogged its progress.

First off I decided to build the baseboard out of foam board. Several sheets of foam board from The Range and a hot glue gun built a reasonable baseboard and WOW was it light in weight! Great! I started to lay the track and out came my stock of second hand 009 gauge points bought probably 20 years ago. Not sure if they were Peco or not but after a short while the sleeper bases just broke up. Having replaced them landscaping then commenced and with a coat of brown base paint the whole thing looked like this.

A nice simple layout with a passing loop and siding along with a slight hill to give some interest to the landscape. It was at this point that I suddenly became aware that foam board was not as stable as I thought and hot glue gun joints were not structurally very strong. What came about is that landscaping the top surface with plaster meant that as the plaster dried out and slightly shrunk it warped the baseboard - Oh Woe! I ended up with a banana shaped baseboard! I thought that I had a photo but can not find it. To cut a long story short two attempts with adding a wooden frame to which the base board was glued and bent back flat with some rather large G clamps were required to rectify the problem. Talking to someone who has success in using foam board baseboards has revealed that there are different qualities of foam board and you can get a much better and stronger joint between the foam board parts if you use the special cutter that gives a stepped joint. There are also a number of other tool s that are useful and some can be seen here 

Having got a flat baseboard again some scenic work has been undertaken and in an earlier series of posts I dealt with the various Shelf Queens that I finished and they are for this layout. At present it all looks very stark and apologies for the picture quality but it was not the best light to take photos when I did these.

It is going to be some time before I get back to this project but there is a basis of an interesting layout there so hopefully it will become a Project of Joy one day. In the meantime I have to go back to my garden work and today is moving some large Yorke paving slabs - Oh Joy!!!!!!