Finding Your Niche in the Hobby

Model Railroading is a hobby with something for everyone.   Building a model railroad can involve carpentry, wiring, track planning, scenery, architecture and electronics.  It can lead the modeler to immerse oneself in history, geology, mechanics, and civil engineering.  Some folks like to replicate entire railroads with computerized operations and time clocks.  Others just like to watch the trains go around and around.   There is no right or wrong way to be a model railroader.   The hobby's Rule Number One is paramount: "It's my railroad!"

When you really get into it, model railroading involves a lot of skills, some of which take years to hone.   There are a lot of things I enjoy about the hobby, some of which I am pretty good at, and some I still have a long way to grow.  But over the last 35 years or so, I have found a great deal of enjoyment in building structures -- whether of wood, plaster, plastic or metal.   In fact, I still have most of the models I built when I first got into the hobby.  If memory serves me, my very first foray into structure building was the Timberline Rio Grande Water Tank, which still occupies a place on the layout.

It was probably not the easiest structure to choose for my first craftsman kit, but I learned a lot about building, painting and weathering a basic lineside railroad structure.  If you look carefully, you can see my first attempt to weather the shingle roof with stains radiating out from the center.  Not bad for a first effort. 

My second attempt was even more ambitious -- a bandstand from Campbell.  Even today I can remember what a pain it was to cut and assemble those tiny little lattices.  But I found that building that kit provided so much enjoyment that I was eager to move on to something more challenging:

 It was sometime in the late 1970s that I discovered Fine Scale Miniatures -- marvelous little kits created by George Sellios of Peabody, Massachusetts.  I had never encountered a kit as complicated as his two story station, which came with a whole box full of tiny white metal details: lamps, barrels, architectural ornaments, even a coke machine and a box full of empties!  Nor had I ever purchased such an expensive kit!  (It was almost $30 -- a lot of money to spend on a box containing little pieces of wood, metal and plastic!)   It must have taken me months to build that station, but today it still occupies a place of honor on the layout.  (Recently, I had a chance to chat with George at his fantastic layout, the Franklin and South Manchester.  When I mentioned that I had built the two story station, George got really excited, and told me that it was one of his favorite kits.  It is one of mine as well!)

After the station, I built one more FSM kit, a coal shed and sand house that was, if possible, even more challenging and complex than the station.  It makes me smile to realize that kits that once sold for $25 and $30 back in the 70s now sell for hundreds of dollars!  I loved those kits, but I had reached the point where I wanted to try building something on my own, not from a kit.

By this time I had become an avid reader of Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman magazines.  In the December 1975 issue of RMC there was an article on Retail Coal Dealers with plans for a coal yard with a really neat three silo coal dock.  I decided to strike out on my own for the first time and build a structure with nothing to go on but a set of drawings and some pictures.  The first challenge was how to construct a round coaling tower.  The answer was at hand -- in fact, it was IN my hand -- a cold brewsky that I was sipping while I read the article.  I built the towers from three empty beer cans, wrapped in scribed basswood, with rubber bands for the steel reinforcing rods.  (No, really!  It worked better than you can imagine!)  The end result was a source of immense satisfaction, not least because I did it myself.  I had become a scratch builder!  (The entire structure finally fell apart a few years ago when the Ambroid cement I had used dried out, and the rubber bands finally rotted and broke.  I still have the parts, and one of these days I may try my hand at resurrecting the beer can coaling dock!

The story doesn't end here.  My passion for building craftsman level structures had led me in new and challenging directions.  But that will have to wait for my next posting.