Expo NG 2017

What's scary is that there are a couple of layouts here that I don't remember.

Expong

A return to the narrow gauge

Life being what it is, one day leads to another and so it is with various projects. The GWR book is at the paste and proof stage with a release date of early 2019. There is still much to do like me having to do the post-paste check and scribbling an index. Aside from that there is the next mighty tome on the horizon - something  wet and Welsh. No not my ex wife, but a 55,000 word discourse on modelling the Welsh narrow gauge mostly in it's easiest form of 009. I'm fully aware that there are those more qualified that me to write about this, but it's my name on the contract. Look forward then to tales of slate and sheep, and men in funny hats blowing horns and riding on tightly packed slivers of rock.
Comfort zone.

Great Western branch line modelling book

The cover proof appeared this morning. I'm never sure about covers. What's inside I have a degree of control over, but at this point onwards the dog is off the lead and all responsibility is handed over to someone else who is choosing what the thing will look like, and what they think is a strong enough cover to make someone pick it up. For the first time both these shots are from inside and not from the file of 'spares for cover'. The lower is Bob Vaughan's Condicote taken at the East Grinstead show a couple of years back - one of my favourites and just on the right side of twee in a very small space.

Class 313s in BR blue livery

 

Into Brighton today on the usual 313. Only something odd. Not the usual GiTRail green and grubby white, but something that looks remarkably like unlettered and unbranded BR blue/grey. No company name, just the numbers. Will they get the double arrow logo? I hope so.

West Mids open day.

Off to the open day of the West Midlands Group of the 009 Society. Fab day out. Lots of chat and arm twisting for articles. And didn't buy any books. That has to be a record. Well done to Mr Webb and the team for putting on a good show.

Saturday Ramble

This week I delivered Modelling the Great Western Branchline book onto the printing conveyer belt, and on the kitchen worktop sit two copies of a contract for the next book, the forth in the series, signed, but as yet unsent.

A couple of people have questioned the wisdom of this move. I think the answer is that I enjoy the journey, enjoy the sometime hair-pulling process of stating with a blank sheet of word doc. and turning it into something readable. The detractors mention the money; lets face it you're never going to get rich quick writing toy train books; for me that's not the point. The cash earned just tips into the pot with all the other things I do. The buzz term for this is 'gig economy' as though this is something new. Well I suppose if you've worked in a 9-5 all your life it is, whereas I could have told you about the gig economy at any point in the last thirty eight years as I've worked in nothing else.

For me the whole point of getting out of bed in the morning is to have as much fun as possible and as soon as things don't give me that I'll walk away. Writing an article or book or even building a layout are the same animal as far as I'm concerned, it's the process that drives me on, and as anyone who knows me will confirm, once I've finished a layout I rapidly lose interest in it. Builder not player.

In about four weeks time I start writing Modelling the Welsh Narrow Gauge; there are problems ahead, mainly in the form of product availability - much of the stalwart end of the kit range has retired, paused or is unexplainably just missing. Never mind, finding he work-arounds will be... entertaining. The GWR book will probably hit the shops at around Christmastime by my reckoning, in the meantime something fictional until any other pre-discussed offers firm up.