Mobile Modelling

It’s hard to believe the iPhone is only a decade old, when the world has changed so much. Today, I had to wait in a parking lot for a few minutes, and as I was thinking about the look of 622’s truck wheels, and how they don’t quite match the photo, I thought I’d see […]

Details – they’re personal

An entertaining post from Marty McGuirk reminded me that I wanted to expand on Summons, which I wrote back in October. There I argued that realism lies in the textures and colours between the details, rather than in the details themselves. Consequently, some of the most realistic models you’ll find are taken out of the […]

Demonstration modelling

I️ didn’t plan very well for this weekend’s Vancouver Train Expo, and consequently, I️ didn’t have a formal scheduled slot in the Craftsman’s Corner. There were, however, two chairs and usually only one occupant. Doug Hicks had brought plenty of light, and I’d thrown the flat cars, a few tools and bits of styrene in […]

The last hobby shop

I confess: even though it was less than two kilometres away, I rarely stopped in at Mr Hobby. They catered to the radio control and plastic modellers, and rarely had anything for me. Occasionally I dipped into their K&S metal rack; they may have sold me a bottle or two of paint. The owner (I […]

Summons

Thanks to my friend, Mark Dance, we remembered to drag the kids to the Monet exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery this weekend. I hold Monet in the same regard as Mozart: he made some good stuff, but it gets repetitive after a while. Having said that, I’ve always liked his paintings of trains. After […]

MFK Fisher: How to write how to

A few weeks ago, I resolved to add MFK Fisher to my reading list. Perhaps by studying some of her work, I might be able to kick my own instructional writing up a notch in the literary sense. I found a thick collection at the local library, and heaved it home one Sunday afternoon. To […]

The Art of X-Ray Reading

I picked up Roy Peter Clark’s The Art of X-Ray Reading at Mosaic Books in Kelowna last weekend. While the book seems tailored more to writers of fiction, I read it mainly to improve my railroad writing. There are so many suggestions in the book that even if I ignore the ones about naming characters […]

The new Proto87.org

I just finished updating the proto87.org website, moving it over to WordPress so that someone else looks after concerns such as keeping the server up-to-date and secure. It’s been so long that I posted there that I’d forgotten about the blog completely! There are a few topics that may be of interest to readers […]

Model railroading will save the world!

In Mark’s response to my post earlier this week about the Importance of Model Railroading, he pointed out that the hobby is also beneficial in developing the skills that we need to tackle the world’s hard problems. Several local tech innovators got their starts in model railroading, and Mark is fond of pointing out that […]

The Importance of Model Railroading

You might be surprised to learn how much energy I put into model railroading. Between my own models, friends’ layouts, ops sessions and the Railway Modellers’ Meet, I estimate that I expend over 10 hours a week on the hobby. Sometimes it troubles me that I spend so much of my energy on something so […]