RGBW

I’ve never been happy with the wash of lights on the backdrop. Not only is the effect terminally subtle for sunrise and sunset, but when turned to bright daylight white, the colour is much too blue, especially when photographed. A short while ago, I found out that light strips are available in Red-Green-Blue and White. […]

Cricut masking

As I mentioned, I’m not finished with Morrisey Fernie and Michel #61. I’ve had another technique rattling around my head, looking for an opportunity to leap out on an unsuspecting model, and this little car was the perfect victim. Masked and painted insignia are all the rage in the aero modelling world these days. When […]

A sacrifice to the weather gods

No amount of YouTube videos or re-reading of Martyn Welch’s excellent book, The Art of Weathering, could convince me I was ready to dust off my rusty weathering skills. Moreover, the world has changed and I want to try my hand at some of the techniques that have taken the other model disciplines by storm. […]

What is scratchbuilding and why it matters

When I entered my passenger car in the contest at the 2011 NMRA national convention in Sacramento, I confess I was aiming to stir things up a bit. I knew the rules wouldn’t know what to make of my model, which I had designed in SketchUp and printed via Shapeways. The model earned a decent […]

Burnstown Road Farm

For several years, one of my background tasks has been to look for inspiration for the scene beyond the roundhouse. I took a whole lot of pictures on our cross-Canada tour in 2018, but never found exactly what I was looking for, which is a pasture with a hill. These are important to tell the […]

Project Garage

You’ve gotta love foam core and hot glue. This combination is so quick and forgiving that you can test almost any idea with a ruler, a sharp knife and a few minutes of spare time. And so, when I found myself burying the modelling desk once again with pieces of 622, I decided to try […]

Boiler details installed

I left most of the details off the boiler until after it was painted. This enabled me to paint the boiler blue to represent planished iron, rather than black. It’s possible that by 1905, 622 was painted black, but I confess I like the blue look. Installing the details was a delicate operation because most […]

Testing a new toy

My brother likes to get gifts that he would like to play with himself. So, when he learned that there is such a thing as static grass, well guess what I received for Christmas. I painted up a square of Styrofoam that has been lurking in a corner of the garage for half a decade […]

St Lawrence Division Clinic

I’m deeply flattered that Malcolm Vant asked me to perform at the St Lawrence Division clinic day next Saturday. I’m also deeply shocked that it starts at six in the morning! It looks like it’s open to members of the SLD only, but the meet page lists instructions for joining if you live in that […]

Passenger car ideas

My first passenger car was 3D printed by accident. It started with the bullnose roof, which would have been difficult to craft. When I finally had the roof drawn, I started wondering how difficult it would be to draw the rest of the car, and then I wondered how much it would cost at Shapeways, […]