Saturday ramble...

...on a Saturday for a change.
For me 2014 is drawing to a close, primarily due to the intense work schedule that wipes out December, I disappear at the end of November and re-emerge caterpillar-like in the first week of the new year. 2015 will be different; things are changing. I/we have done some eight shows this year; that ain't going to happen again; it can't. There are three layouts currently on the books: Svanda, Tal-coed and the embryonic Morton Stanley. Two of those are really only one day beasts, but more than that I'm tiring of the pure public show mentality; much better are the open-day type where there are a few like minded individuals to chat to and exchange ideas with rather than those events where I feel like I am train-operator-monkey shuffling my stuff up and down for people who quite frankly a lot of the time are just keeping out of the rain and couldn't give a toss.
There are essentially two more layouts on the 'five year plan': the GWR terminus and the O gauge which could go one of two ways. These will probably stay, but being that they are pretty much set as exhibition games, there is a feeling of relaxed in-urgency about them. They'll get done when the sap rises. So where does that leave me? Well I did have an idea to pack it in for a while and go back to being a rent boy, but I'm told I'm too old now so I may build a home layout instead. But what? and why?
There are lots of possibles: 009 is the most logical, it's home base and I have a lot of it in stock, but then to some extent it's another 009 layout for me, and I've had my fill over the last couple of years. What is rising to the top is something either industrial or light in 4mm. One of my favourite things is 4mm wagon-building and I do very little of it these days despite there being an unlimited  supply of cheap available supplies. Another factor is the liking for the Kent and East Sussex Railway. The prototype is around the corner and I have bits enough to start, like the above which I built ages ago from a part-built K's kit and a Branchlines chassis. There is another kit in stock and an LSWR 0330 saddle tank - all suitable stuff. It would be possible to wrap 2/3 stations around the room that I'm sitting in. As Paul Marshal-Potter put it in a recent post of his ' ...a railway that goes somewhere.' So in order to feel my way, in the Terrier arrived on the desk -  a little worse for wear: chipped paint, no crew and the ironwork around the dome to rebuild. The transfers are rub-downs from Mabex, now long gone. Are there newer replacements?

Workspaces

I'm always baffled by how different people's modelling workspaces are and being a tidy sort of chap how cluttered they become. I work on a computer desk that I bought from Argos many moons ago for the sum of £19. It's white so I can see the bits, as are the walls around it to reflect as much light as possible. The day job requires me to sit in black gloom a lot of the time with bright light shining straight at me, which in any other circumstances would be called 'the interrogation', so I want to get away from that as fast as possible. I also try to only have what I'm working on at that time on the bench; at least in the central part. So with the current engine shed build only the world-famous scrapbox, the back wall, solvent, square, knife, brush and the work itself.

The back wall of the shed will be visible through the open doors, so a quick scout around the net for some indication of how the wall frames would be put together and a mock-up in 60 thou strip will give enough visual information. This is a stand alone item for the moment which has no home, just being built for demo purposes.

Winge

Don't move house.
Well do, but accept the short term consequences. Leaving the old house in sunny Rodmell was good: I'd been there for thirteen years and had tired of the semi-rural existence where it is necessary to get in the car for every single thing, there were memories of bad days and I'd gotten fed up with the game of fire cleaning/no central heating and sleeping in the loft which had a temperature variation from -5 - +90 deg.
Moving back into town seemed like a good idea - it still is, but even if you are even slightly contemplating a shift think on.

I have a book project underway and I need to practice at least a little. Since September the whole thing has gone tits up as I'm spending my whole day on house stuff which at Rodmell had all been done. I'm still working on the bathroom project, while Mrs F. is  slowly decorating my workshop/study. This has completely curtailed any modelling as as soon as I do anything it gets moved while she paints skirting or something and by the next morning it's all vanished. I have books spread over four rooms, and as for tools and modelling material... it could be anywhere at any given moment. The whole process is quite frankly a pain in the arse.

You have been warned.

Thinking of Charlie.

Quite a few years ago now Charlie Watts was asked what it had been like playing for the Rolling Stones for 25 years. 'Well, 5 years playing and 20 years waiting around.'
How true.