Saturday Ramble

As it is with model railway clubs, many of my friends come under the 70+ self isolating banner and are now going stir-crazy after one day. Me? Loving it. I can still do stuff within reason, but it's quiet and all of a sudden some of the pressures are off, as in as of now I don't actually need to leave the house for the next eight months. I'm all but unemployed and there are no exhibitions left to go to.

What does this mean? I feel we are about to have a global reset and with my usual Tigger attitude I see this as a good thing. Miss Turnberg must be gleeful - 'you said you couldn't afford to cut the CO2 output'. We have now. As far as the general subject of this blog is concerned, life goes on pretty much as normal in that I'm making stuff and painting baseboards, being partially restricted doesn't bother me too much as long as the paint and glue doesn't run out. This week has been tidy some things and finish off a few bits and bobs. The black paint has come out and the latest 009 has been done as well as a colour change for Orne. Without any screaming deadlines I can add a few details to Hopwood and as of April 1st I can start the O gauge. There is another book floating on the horizon and the one just done to proof read when it turns up; so busy times.

Could this be a new dawn for modelling? I was talking the other day about the splits in the hobby. Which are in crude terms: the finescalers, the faster exhibition layout builders, the long term home layout builders and last but not least the people who buy red boxes and show them on youtube. The first group are shrinking fast, through age and the fact that the RTR has caught up. The second (which is where I'd put me) will have to rethink. The third group will grow. and the forth...? Well I'm sure matron will be along shortly with some milk.

If we are to be under this partial house arrest for a while then two things may happen: group two will morph into group three as there will be no point in building quick exhibition layouts. It will become build a home layout that could be shown - in other words we will return to the 1950s. The other thing will be that the Chinese production may fade and materials may go up in price or be hard to get hold of. So essentially we will go back to the 1940s. Less buying, more pure model-making and scratch building from wood card and scavenged material. This could be good. We shall see.