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What's Your Personal Modeling Journey?

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  • geoawelch
    Newly back after a long hiatus. Life is not always kind. Anyhow, to the question at hand.

    I discovered Model Railroading as a young adult poking around my library’s magazine section. They had back issues of MR and RMC going back many years.

    In an old RMC, I saw a series of articles by Dave Frary and Bob Hayden about a fictional area, “Thatcher’s Inlet”. What kind of black magic was this.

    I started subscribing to MR and in December discovered that this was when all the big “Craftsman” kits were introduced, one of them by a company called Fine Scale Miniatures.

    Feeling these masterpieces were beyond my skill level at the time, I bought some Campbell Kits and did ok with them. They were not really my style, however.

    Doing a little research I found out that George Sellios had produced numerous smaller kits before going to his yearly approach. The instructions in these kits opened a whole new world.

    When George’s book came out, he mentions Lloyd Geibner’s Flour and Grain Mill and that he still had the March 1955 issue that it sprang from. I wrote to him and in his thoughtful reply, he forwarded me to Dave Frary who kindly supplied me with a copy.

    That became my first scratch built structure. A leaning shack on George’s layout from a Wayne Wezolowski article in MR became my second.

    Along this time, I discovered Bob Brown’s Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette and the fine modeling in there. Three modeler’s really caught my eye - Chuck Doan, Dave Reveila, and the late Brian Nolan, among others. Their skill was in a complete other universe and the great photography really displayed their craftsmanship.

    It was around this time that I discovered Brett’s kits and after a few years and false starts are ready to give a couple a go, in O scale, which is new territory for me, but will be better for my 62 year old eyes and sanity.

    Thanks for creating this great thread Brett. More importantly, thanks for providing a platform and inspiring modeler’s for years with your kits, this website and forum.

    Cheers,

    George
  • Jerry
    Welcome George! If yo need help you came to one of the right places.
    Looking forward to your adventures in O-Scale.

    Jerry
  • geoawelch
    Thanks Jerry, I was actually a member of the forum back around the time frame that O’Neill’s was first released in HO, so I’m a relapser
  • David_CDavid_C
    edited December 2021
    Wow, there are some very interesting modellers here. My journey into model railroading started, like a lot of you, when I was a child in England back in the 50s. My father bought my brother and me a Hornby 00 set. My brother had no interest so it was all mine. We moved to Canada in 1959 and brought that set with us. It was all then converted to Canadian power. I then got into HO. Played around with that until the 70s when I switched to N scale. That didn’t last long and I went back to HO. On a trip to Seattle I found a brass Shay and because I was blinded by the brass and being a Shay, I didn’t realize that it was HOn3 until I got back home. So there I was bounding my way through narrow gauge. I was loving it because there was more to it all than just standard gauge. It was at this time I discovered FSM kits and building in wood. Through two wives I was on this narrow gauge trip with both of them telling me to stop playing with trains. Little did they understand.

    I married a wonderful lady in 1999 and she and her mother, God bless her, we’re both, not only understanding, but every time we went to Creative Hobbycraft 3 Floors Hobby in New Westminster, I ended up coming away with Walthers kits, without me spending a single penny. One day my wife saw this cute little Shay and even though it was a bit pricey, she bought it for me as she knew I like geared locomotives. It was then that I got involved with On30.

    A few years go by and I found SWSM. Oh my goodness. I thought I had learned a lot from George Selios, I had no idea how fantastic SWSM could be like. What fantastic detail and the instructions are more like manuals. I started with the Tractor Repair Shed. I had to buy these kits directly from Brett as nobody knew about them where I was. At one point, I had phoned Brett about something, can’t remember exactly, and I was telling him I was scratch building the FSM sawmill in O scale, and he tells me he has an O scale sawmill being developed.

    We’ll to this date, I now have every O scale kit including that great set of machinery, plus the Shipyard in HO, and eagerly waiting for the next instalment of the Foundry and also the boiler repair shop for the O scale RRC. My On30 layout is being rebuilt as I want to create dioramas that connect to each other with all my SWSM structures. I am still trying to build a small dual gauge layout in HO. I have 5 Blackstone locos and a yard full of their rolling stock sitting in boxes.

    I am very slow at building them right now because I suffer from a very painful problem, that it wasn’t until 20 years ago that it was actually diagnosed as a birth defect that was causing all of this, so I can only work on them for short periods.

    I had started to install LED lighting into the sawmill but the wires are so fine, and I’ve destroyed too many LEDs, that even with magnifying glasses, I have trouble. One of the members on the Facebook group On30 Railroading, suggested fibre optics. This is where I am at right now, and will be attempting to install Dwarvin fibre optics in all of my O scale buildings.

    I may not post much in the Forum but I am a bit of a lurker and thoroughly enjoy all the build threads.

    Cheers everyone.
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