Agonizing

I occasionally tell people that I'm a model railway modeller. A Train Nut, if you will.

When I was fourteen (to put a proper perspective on it, that was thirty-four years ago) I built a model train set but lost patience, and ditched it before it ever ran. It just wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Since then I've collected a sizeable number of locomotives and carriages both complete and in kitset form, detail parts and track. There was an abortive attempt in 1999 to build a small layout but I always came up against something I couldn't do, or couldn't do well enough to satisfy me. I was hand-making my own track. The stuff you can buy just didn’t look as nice as the crafted stuff I saw in the magazines. My favourite is the Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette. It has been showcasing stunning model work for many years and just keeps getting better.

But for me it was too hard. What to do? Give up. Psycho-analyise that one...

At that same time, I bought a kitset of this - a New Zealand Railways guards van. Start with something simpler, I thought. Trouble was, there was a problem with the kit in that the wee side-steps fouled the bogies (or trucks, if you’re in North America) and the whole thing came off the rails. Literally. My soldering and fabrication skills just weren’t up to it. I told it to myself so quietly, that even I didn’t hear it. It just was.

I’m on a countdown right now. We’re moving to Canada and there are so many things whizzing through my head that I can’t sleep more than a few hours a night. So a couple of days ago I got that damn kitset out and thought how I was going to do it. I’ve been collecting those Gazettes since 1983 (good grief) and the experts always talked about soldering jigs. That isn’t a dance. It’s a “thing” that holds the parts in place while they are being soldered. Well, perhaps I should harden up and actually plan this properly. So I made the parts to the steps and even made a little dimple-tool to form rivet-heads. You can just see the buggers at the back of the step.

And it worked!

Next, the end railings in the kit were a casting that was all warped and of fairly crap quality. So I’d ditched it. Hmmm. Awesome strategy, but now I needed to make one! Another soldering jig danced its way across my workspace. I’ve seen these things described in pictures for years but never sat down and worked on them patiently until I got them right; just kept practicing, and using the tips in some of those lovely magazines.

The thing I’m learning at last: Too hard? Don’t give up.

So my model is at last nearing completion and while it’s still not as lovely as the ones I see in the Gazette, I’m realising that it’s lovely enough for me. Perhaps that’s another, and far more valuable thing that I’ve learned.