A tree got in the way

This was one of the first A&A trial photos I took on Boxing Day. I rather liked it until I noticed way off in the distance there was a tree in the Mortimer Park Loop still in full summer foliage. That wouldn't do. I thought about it for awhile and decided the only thing to do was yank it out - so I did. Luckily, after photos were taken, summer was restored by gluing it back in place :-)

The model railroad abstractions of Francis Lee Jaques

I had a painting teacher who said that for a time she was a student of noted wildlife painter Robert Bateman, and that Mr. Bateman once told his students that all painting was abstract painting. I found this quite a striking statement as his paintings are extremely realistic; however, she said his reasoning was that the act of painting itself required the painter to make all sorts of abstractions regardless of what category viewers of the work might place one’s paintings. A painting of an animal was not the animal itself, but a representation - an abstraction - of a real one. 

Recently Vince was telling me about the model railroading work of Francis Lee Jaques, the famous wildlife painter and dioramist at New York’s American Museum of Natural History. Jaques might be thought of as one of model railroading’s classic abstractionist as he applied all manner of visual diorama tricks to build a personal model railroad of outstanding drama and visual power. Model Railroader’s editors noted in their February 1999 issue that Jaques broke every rule of model railroading and quite a few other things that people never thought to make a rule about but in the end his layout was stunning.

The primary article on Jaques work is The amazing GNR of Francis Lee Jaques in the May ’62 issue of MR, but there are also some interesting track plans and colour sketches of his that appeared in the Sept ’43 and Nov ’44 issues. The May ’62 article is a tour de force of images and methods that produced exactly what the title said, an amazing O scale layout. But, his methods might have been too idiosyncratic for most readers to try for themselves. For example, to make his locomotives appear longer and sleeker he built them to run on S gauge track (even though he wasn’t building a narrow gauge line), and reduced their heights while preserving their lengths. My suspicion was that he might have done this because normally we see these machines running by at ground level where their speed, and our eye-level perspective, makes them seem longer and narrower than they actually are. And if this is the perception, or maybe even just Jaques’ perception, why not replicate that instead of merely the one of blueprint technical correctness? 

When I look at Jaques’ work in MR it makes me wonder if we should think about our current approaches to realism as a type of abstraction, and in so doing, consider if there are other sorts of abstractions that might better suit our purposes. Mirrors and background flats and other such tricks are commonly deployed, but maybe there are others that our current prejudices won’t allow us to consider.

Pyramid power

It took a bit of doing, but the decorative pyramid roof is done.

There are 9 little pyramids, and each was cut from a piece of acid-free 3x5 card.

I drew a template for a pyramid side using what I could remember of high school geometry, and used it to lay out a pyramid such that, when cut out, it could be folded and glued into the final shape. As well, holes were punched into two sides to accept a pair of those thin verticals from the window wall. Turns out I screwed up punching those holes on the first batch and had to make a second set with correctly placed holes. Yes, I can hear some of you saying, an automated paper cutter would have done this job in a flash. Indeed.

But, after all that, here's the roof before installation. The pyramids are held on to the substrate with combination of transfer tape and Weld Bond.

It took a couple of attempts, but eventually, with enough careful prodding and persuading, as well as a little hole adjustment, all those verticals fit into the corresponding roof holes. Glue was applied to the tops of the white posts to hold them to the roof substrate. Once everything was in place, I put my ancient steel level on top to hold the whole thing together while the glued dried. 

Up next: signs, plants, and some little details.

Lessons from photo staging

I learn a lot about layout improvements when I stage photos. Yesterday being Boxing Day, I got to thinking about Toronto Boxing Day sales in the '70s and '80s, especially at A&A and Sam the Record Man. Given that I have an A&A model, the die was cast, so I took some photos of the lineup outside HO A&A's on Ocean Boulevard and posted one to Instagram. 

Setting things up made it quite clear that I don't have any figures dressed in cold weather clothes, and that my figure collection skews towards older people. When I sorted out the figures I did have, I found a few that wore some sort of cool weather clothing, but I didn't really have enough to stage a proper Boxing Day lineup, so the lineup is a bit sparse. And the street looks a little too barren. It needs things like fire hydrants, newspaper boxes, trash cans and so on. So, lots of improvements to make in the year ahead.

The lighting's not quite right in this one, but the bigger problem is the gigantic camera lens reflected in the window ! With so many 'glass' surfaces on these city buildings, checking for stray reflections requires constant vigilance :-) I like the framing along the bottom provided by the two parked cars and the guy leaning against the fender, but the rest needs improvement. 

I found this one in my files from back in the fall soon after the Mortimer Park overhead was installed. This picture also looks a bit barren, but I do like the feeling of depth and openness. Also, I'm going to build some moveable background flats made from foamboard with photos of high-rises stuck on to provide some view blocking to the background - things should then not look like the edge of the world is just behind some model :-)

The Wallace-bot 9000

Inspired by the NASA techno-trousers in The Wrong Trousers. Now with extra windup walking power!

Cross braces, end walls, and a planter

The title says just about everything that needs to be said: end walls were added to the main glass window wall, cross braces were glued to the main support posts and the white wall, and a planter that runs the entire length of the model was attached to the bottom of the window wall. The next job is the most complex part of this project: installing the upside-down pyramid roof that's above the main window wall. I'm going to need a lot of coffee to get through it :-) Back in October I thought I could build this model in a couple of weeks. I was crazy. This is one of the most challenging projects I've attempted. The MCM facade on this thing is just crazy. Yikes! I've used the word crazy twice. I hope that's not an omen. Stay tuned.

The Rebel Railroaders

What with the pandemic and all I’ve been in something of a reflective mood this Christmas season. One diversion has been an almost compulsive reading of Robertson Davies’ 1982 book,The Rebel Angels, which is the first instalment in his Cornish Trilogy. One passage that really struck home was this statement by Hollier during his attempt to explain to Madame Laoutaro what he did for a living:

I am an historian, not of wars or governments, not of art or science - at least not science as people think of it now - but of beliefs. I try to recapture not simply the fact that people at one time believed something-or-other, but the reasons and the logic behind their belief. It doesn’t matter if the belief was wrong, or seems wrong to us today: it is the fact of the belief that concerns me. You see, I don’t think people are foolish and believe wholly stupid things; they may believe what is untrue, but they have a need to believe the untruth - it fills a gap in the fabric of what they want to know, or think they ought to know. We often throw such beliefs aside without having truly understood them. If an army is approaching on foot nowadays, the information reaches us by radio, or perhaps by army telephone; but long ago every army had men who could hear the approach of an enemy by putting their heads to the ground. That wouldn’t do now, because armies move faster, and we attack them before we can see them, but it worked very well for several thousand years. That is a simple example; I don’t want to bore you with complexities. But the kind of sensitivity that made it possible for a man to hear an army marching several miles away without any kind of artificial aid has almost disappeared from the earth. The recognition of oneself as part of nature, and reliance on natural things, are disappearing for hundreds of millions of people who do not know that anything is being lost. I am not digging into such things because I think the old ways are necessarily better than the new ways, but I think there may be some of the old ways that we would be wise to look into before all knowledge of them disappears from the earth - the knowledge and the kind of thinking that lay behind it.

I too like to seek out knowledge about the roots of things and ideas, wondering if anything important has been lost or sidetracked. If you’re a longtime reader here, you know I have something of an obsession about rambling around the roots of model railroading’s hidden history. And it’s not just looking for model railroading’s obscured and ignored beginnings, I find myself applying the same mindset to other areas. I think the first serious occurrence was when I was in school studying aerodynamics. The library had what I think was a complete set of NACA (NASA’s predecessor) reports stretching back to the late 1910s (?). I was obsessed with trying to read them all to figure out how aerodynamic thinking came to be what it was, and maybe find out if anything was lost. I can see myself continuing my digs into the dusty corners of model railroading’s roots - as well as lots of other areas - in 2021 with this Davies sentence in mind: I am not digging into such things because I think the old ways are necessarily better than the new ways, but I think there may be some of the old ways that we would be wise to look into before all knowledge of them disappears …

Steinberg's facade

The 'glass' front wall is now attached to the building. That simple sentence obscures a rather involved construction process. I should have taken some in-process photos, but I was so focused on the work that it didn't cross my mind. 

As soon as the glue was solid enough to flip the building to its normal position I had a strong feeling that it looked right even though I can see a lot of flubs and evilness that must be corrected. But, I was glad to have that feeling. I hope I have the same when the upside-down pyramid roof is installed. 

A look back at 2020

My mum and a lost tinplate train from Christmas '61*

This year’s wrap-up seems quite trivial and banal in light of events in the wider world, but maybe some inconsequential banality has its uses in temporarily resting the mind. I hope that 2021 is much better for all, and I wish you and your families good health, peace, and some sort of resumption of normality in the coming year.

And now for the inconsequential banality: some highlights from this year at the 30Squares Media Empire’s World Domination Headquarters :-)

This year I finally made a serious effort to build some HO scale modern buildings: here're the Thomson Building, and the Canadian Press Complex. I know, two isn’t many, but a start’s a start, and there was a lot to learn. The challenge for the coming year will be to figure out how I can build these sorts of models faster, and with the look and style I have in mind, as I’ve got a lot of projects on my list.

Progress was made on my HO-scale Ocean Park Loop layout. The fundamentals of all the modules were built and streetcars were run. Much fun was had building and painting the streets, constructing a subway entrance, and stringing overhead ‘wire’. Even though the ‘wire’ is actually just decorative cotton thread, it improves the look of photos staged on the layout. All layout related posts can be found under the Ocean Park Loop keyword.

I felt the need to read a lot this year. As well as much re-reading of old books that I haven’t cracked open in a long time, I read many new-to-me books. I particularly liked The Last Samurai, The Blind Assassin, Clyde Fans, and Whiskey Galore.  I’m currently reading Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, and was surprised by an early delivery of a used copy of Robertson Davies’ Cornish Trilogy, so it’s next up**. I don’t know if I’ll read as much in 2021. I suspect the new year will have a different vibe, and maybe the compulsion will ebb.

The most popular posts made in 2020 were those on the construction of AHM’s Weekly Herald kit.

And with every year, I did a little bit of time travelling and found these kits :-)

Although I consider the E. L. Moore project to be more-or-less over, this year I learned a lot about his designs that were converted to plastic kits. There are still many open questions about E. L. Moore’s work, and with each passing year it becomes more unlikely they’ll ever be answered. I was glad to have many great conversations and exchanges with Martin regarding the world of plastic building kits, especially on the various releases of E. L. Moore's. The Machine Shop has been a kit of interest.

My favourite project this year was Cal’s Coastal Café. It had the right combination of pleasure, build speed, uniqueness, and story. A close second was the Hot Wheels Maserati Mistral restoration. The surprise factor, along with a relatively quick and easy restoration, made that one fun.

Model railroad cartoons popped up a lot this year. I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the work of Bill Baron, Gil Mellé, and Doug Wright.

In the summer I set up an Instagram account. Its purpose was mainly to post photos of finished scenes from layouts past and present. I was looking for trends in my work, and for clues about what needs to be improved to realize the feeling I’m after***. Although it doesn’t have many followers compared to most Instagram accounts, uptake and viewership is much stronger there than here at the blog, which lead me to wonder if I should continue blogging considering the effort some posts take. The jury’s still out on that question. I’ll see how things play out in the new year.

And that’s that. I’d like to thank everyone who came by and spent some time here! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

---

* This year I scanned all my father’s 8mm home movies. The opening picture is an image I sliced from a movie of our 1961 family Christmas: it shows some sort of windup tinplate toy train scooting around a circle of track. I had no recollection of this toy - I was only 2 at the time. The train only makes a 2 or 3 second appearance, and isn’t the centre of interest in the frame, so the image is fleeting. Various types of real and miniature trains make appearances in several of the films, so I wonder if maybe train stuff was imprinted on my brain much earlier than my proposed got-interested-in-model-railroading date of summer ’73. Maybe I was subconsciously primed from an early age? Another question among many for Dr. Freud :-)

** I jumped ahead a bit and cracked open the first in the trilogy, The Rebel Angels, to get a taste. Among other things, the first few pages seemed to have an interesting late '70s, early '80s Toronto vibe that grabbed me, so this looks like something I'll be sticking with.

*** I must admit that none of my photos have yet to capture what I’m after. A few have come close, but there’s something missing in all of them. There’s a certain sense of being in the world that I’m looking to capture, but haven’t yet. It isn’t something that I can completely express in words, although I think that my photos need to consider things like surface textures, street accoutrements, figure placement and staging, signs and markings, spacing, sidewalk sizing, eye-level viewing, and lighting - especially lighting and eye-level viewing - to help realize what I'm looking for. What about detail? Detail is a fussy word. So much effort is spent on detail and relatively little on lighting. In a lot of photos I come across the lighting is so uniform and boring I often wonder what the people who take them are seeing. Maybe the lighting is done that way so details are clear? I'm also at a point where I dismiss any photo that doesn't look like it could have somehow been taken by a figure in the scene - God's eye views are leaving me cold. 

I don't think the conventional wisdom of weathering and detail are some secret sauce that will help me bring about the sense I’m looking for. The city I’m chasing is a living thing almost as much as the people in it. In a lot of model railroads and dioramas, cities or towns, and their buildings, are backdrops - just static movie sets to fill out spacial requirements. So, the usual kits, maybe with some unique signs, will do. Because I grew up in a vastly different Toronto than today's - one in transition with an extensive network of buses, streetcars, and subways that interconnected the whole thing - I have a particular sense of what a certain type of urban place is like - or maybe, more accurately, what I want it to be like. I’ve not seen it expressed, and I’m working on developing my impressions of it. I see a lot of North American urban modelling is of rundown and derelict places, or olde timey places if ‘trollies’ are involved. Did the modeller live through that? Just drive through it now and then? Learn about it from tv or a book? Is it all just made up from a mishmash of stereotypes? I don’t know, but it doesn’t capture what I’m thinking of. What I see ahead of me is trying to capture a sense of being in a certain type of city I have in my head by way of photographs.

Full size Machine Shop?

The Machine Shop-esque building on Bronson near Gladstone (Google Street Views)

We dropped by the Red Apron last week, and on our way there it finally dawned on me why the Cycle Salvation building seemed so familiar: it looks sort of like the Machine Shop and is about the same size. No, it doesn't have side walls of staggered windows, but it does have a rather nice side corner window that I need to take photos of. So, the Machine Shop, either box-stock or slightly kitbashed, could find a use on a streetcar layout with that bus stop replaced by a suitable car stop.

Railroad Modeler’s Penny Model Projects & The Progression Method

My grain elevator Penny Model built in '74

I’ve always been fascinated by Challenge Publications’ Railroad Modeller magazine that was published in the ‘70s. Back then the first issue I saw was Jan ’74, and the last was May ’74. I never saw any again throughout the ‘70s. A few years ago I acquired what I think is a complete set of Railroad Modeler’s entire run, and it’s been great to be able to read them ‘on demand’. Recently I decided to go through the entire collection again. This time around their Penny Model Project series caught my interest.

Back in the day I built the series’ grain elevator model that appeared in the Feb ’74 issue. It turns out E. L. Moore’s Clarabel Hotel was also in that issue, so that was an exciting month for me :-) What I didn’t realize then was that the grain elevator was the first of the magazine’s Penny Model Projects, where according to the editor, each model is designed to be built for under one dollar total cost and still achieve the look and scale of a custom built structure. It turns out that $1 in 1974 is about equal to $5.25 today. 

From my reading it looks like there were 10 articles in the series, where most were written by Ron Tarjany. Here’s the list of articles I’ve found, and, as always, if you know of any I’ve forgotten, please let me know:

Build a Paper Grain Elevator; Rudy Ruckert; Feb ’74

Constitution Savings & Loan; Ron Tarjany; Sept ’74

Railroad Storage Sheds; Ron Tarjany; Dec ’74

New England Vintage Storeroom; Bill James Jr.; Jan ’75

A Different Water Tower; Ron Tarjany; Mar ’75

1930’s Gas Station; Ron Tarjany; July ’75

Industrial Warehouse; Ron Tarjany; Feb ’76

Gold Mine; Ron Tarjany; Nov ’76

Handcar House; Ron Tarjany; Apr ’77

Box Car Freight House; Ron Tarjany; Sept ’77

There’re a variety of structure types and materials involved in these projects, but one aspect that is constant throughout is the structure walls are drawn as one continuous strip on a length of moderately heavy cardboard, with the wall corners scored for folding. In some cases other materials were glued over the cardboard superstructure to provide a finished surface, and in others the cardboard was left as is and just painted. The grain elevator was one project in the ‘just painted’ group.

The folded cardboard wall strip method wasn’t new to the Penny Model Project, and has been used by many other model builders. John Allen used it in his engine house project that appeared in the October, November, and December 1948 issues of The Model Craftsman, and I have no doubt it predated that famous series.

There were also other Railroad Modeler projects that made use of the cardboard wall strip method that didn’t appear as Penny Model Projects. Two of the more interesting ones were Mark Henley’s Big Tujunga’s Tiny Depot and Depot at the Crossing that appeared in the Jan ’78 and Feb ’78 issues respectively. The cardboard wall strip method of structure construction seemed to be something of a minor house style at Railroad Modeler. 

One of my favourite model railroads, John Olson’s Cielo Logging Co., appears in the Jan ’74 issue. In the article Mr. Olson mentions how he built the layout’s structures: Most are made from artist’s illustration board about 1/16” thick. I use standard techniques, most from early articles and early progression model building before the plastics and other media were available I use those because the go together fast. I do them on a drafting table with a sliding parallel and you can build a structure in four to five hours, whereas it takes that long now to put together a plastic kit by the time you’re done painting it and adding a few details…All the buildings are good “foundation” buildings to which details and finishing aspects can be added later. 

I’ve wondered what his use of the phrase early progression model building meant. Looking around, I think he was referring to applying something like the cardboard strip method where the structure is built up in a progression of steps and layers on the strip and then folded - or maybe cut out, reinforced, and then assembled - into the building prior to final finishing. I suspect walls of 1/16” artist illustration board couldn’t be folded into a structure, but would need to be cut out, possibly reinforced, and then assembled. One common feature of these models appears to be that interior detailing wasn’t a priority, and most seem to be closed boxes. Although, the models do look good.

Compare this to the more-or-less standard E. L. Moore method where each wall is cut from balsa - possibly two pieces for each wall with their grains at 90 degrees - and built up until a ‘kit’ is obtained where the individual components are glued together to make the building - his articles often featured a ‘kit’ photo of the walls prior to being glued together. A typical E. L. Moore project claimed to take 2 weeks of spare time, but an Olson project was claimed at 4 or 5 hours. However, a Moore project was likely a more complete model, often with an interior.

Another apparent variation on the progression / cardboard wall strip method are Doug Leffler’s classic wooden buildings and rolling stock built up from various thicknesses of Strathmore Bristol board. He explains his method in Modeling with Strathmore in the July ’73 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman, and you can find a number of excellent projects in these RMC articles of his,

CNR Wood Caboose, Feb ’72

Branchline Station; Aug ’72

Multi-purpose MofW Car; Jan ’73

Building a Tool and Section Car House; Feb ’74.

In those projects the superstructures are made from 4-ply Strathmore Bristol, and after a certain amount of layout and finishing on the drawing board, the walls are cut out and reinforced prior to assembly.

Overall, it looks like the Penny Projects were based on creative simplifications of an older, but quite effective technique for making model buildings. Good for a young beginner like me at the time to get a start. Even if his efforts weren’t that good, at least a complete model resulted in short order :-) 

A two storey Machine Shop

I've been reading my way through Railroad Modeler, and in the Feb '79 issue found this picture of a Machine Shop kitbash on the layout of the Sacramento Model Railroad Club. It's a creamery that's 1 storey shorter than this one, but it's impressive nevertheless. The Machine Shop got around back in the '70s.

A Christmas Kitbash*

Frank Madwood’s my name, and model making for a living’s my game. Or at least it was.

Christmas Eve

I rolled my chair away from my workbench and scooted over to the window. I parallel parked, pulled up the blinds, and watched the Christmas lights come on up and down the street from my fourth storey perch. The calendar said Christmas Eve, but it felt like any other winter day in the late afternoon: bleak and depressing. I had a number of end of the month commissions on the go that needed to be finished by the end of the month. And there were bills to be paid. And customers to be placated. And creditors to be cajoled. And so on and so on. Hopefully I’ll get out of here before midnight. 

The deli was to close early today so I thought I’d better go down and get a sandwich. Problem was I was tired, and did’t feel like getting my butt in gear for even that simple task. I rolled back over to the bench. Maybe if I just put my head down for a minute and rest my eyes. 

Rest my eyes turned out to be a euphemism for falling fast asleep.

Al

Groaning and rattling woke me with a start. And for once the groaning and rattling wasn’t coming from me. I looked up. Standing at attention on the other side of the bench was a grey and dishevelled man in a worn hoodie and faded jeans. It was my old model making buddy Al Sim. The problem was Al was dead. I shook myself to see if the hallucination would pass. It didn’t. Instead, it spoke.

“I’ve come to talk to you Frank.”

I decided to try confrontation. “You’re not Al, Al. You’re just me hallucinating. You’re just some glue vapours I’ve inhaled.”

An unholy wailing issued forth from Al’s side of the bench that blew me and my chair up against the window. Al thew his head back and waved his arms around with wild abandon. To his wrists were shackled large, lumpy sacks that pummelled his head. 

The wailing and pummelling froze my insides. 

But, thankfully it ended before I reached absolute zero.

I felt like jumping out the window, but I was frozen in place. I couldn’t think what to do, so I stalled and asked for clarification, “What the hell are those sacks?”

“They are a lifetime of unfinished kits that I am doomed to drag through eternity,” was his dejected reply.

I looked at the wall behind Al. Ok, well, more precisely, I could see through Al to the far wall. It was lined floor to ceiling with unopened kits waiting for that someday, someday when I’d build them.

I tried the innocent angle. “They say you can’t take them with you Al.” 

Al threw his head back, and it looked like the hounds of hell were to howl again.

“Ok, ok, I’m listening.”

Al lowered his head, looked me in the eyes, and pointed a painty figure at me. “You will be visited tonight by three spirits. Pay heed to save your soul.” 

And with that, he vanished. 

I was shaking like a leaf and still frosty inside. 

I carefully eased myself from the chair and headed for the coffee machine in the outer office. The coffee was never that good, but the glue vapours in here were doing a number on my head. 

Little did I know there was far worse than bitter coffee on the other side of the outer office door.

Brian

The outer office sure didn’t look like the outer office I knew. This one was clean, with unstained furniture and new paint on the walls. The coffee machine didn’t look like mine either. It was bright and sparkling and the aroma coming from it smelled quite pleasant. And to top it off there was a jovial looking fellow standing beside it handing me a cup of the lovely brew. 

“Here, you need it.”

“Thanks. I don’t think we’ve met? What’s your name?”

“My job title is The Ghost of Christmas Past, but everyone calls me Brian.”

I drank a little from the cup. “Ah, that’s lovely stuff.” I studied the cup and its contents, then commented, “This didn’t come from my coffee machine.”

“It did when you first moved in here.”

Come to think of it, it did. Lack of regular cleaning probably had something to do with its current wretchedness. 

Oh hell, it was clear the glue fumes were locked in my head, so I decided to take another sip and go with it, “What brings you here Brian?”

“You do my friend. Why don’t you take another sip?”

Brian motioned that I drink up.

I did with great pleasure, but the taste came with a wallop. Peering over the cup I could see a person who looked like a child version of me playing with the train set I got for Christmas when I was eight. I had a lot of fun with that old thing.

Brian looked me in the eye and gently asked, “See anything you recognize?”

I wasn’t going to be flip with a glue vapours retort this time. Once with the wailing was enough for me. I gave up a hesitant, “Yes.”

“Take another drink. A good long one this time.”

So I did. And I saw a whirl of many hours building kits, painting, running trains, slopping plaster around, cutting up things to make new things, balsa bashing, and all-round general happy model hacking as a youngster.

I wanted to ask Brian if the coffee was laced with LSD, but like Al, he might not have a sense of humour. 

“Does anything come to mind? Maybe you need another cup?”

“No, no, the one is fine. Thanks for reminding me about those happy times, but I shouldn’t linger there. There’s work to do.”

“Yes, there is always work to do,” said Brain in a reflective tone.

I handed Brain the cup. “It was good meeting you Brian. Thanks for the coffee and memories, but I’ve got to get back to it if I want to get home by a reasonable time.”

I started to walk back to the door to the workshop and my bench. 

“Not so fast,” called Brian.

When I reached the door it wouldn’t open. I twisted and pulled on the doorknob, but the door wouldn’t open even a crack.

I gave up and turned and faced Brian. He was standing there with an outstretched arm pointing to the door to the hallway. “There’s someone else for you to meet.”

I’ll bet there was. 

CP

“Dude, it’s good to see you! It’s been a long time!”

“I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“Dude, I’m hurt. I’m The Ghost of Christmas Present. Christmas present is every Christmas, because every present is the present until it becomes the past.”

“I don’t think I follow.”

“Dude, it’s a time and space thing. Don’t get too bummed out by it.”

“Do you have a name, like Brian?”

“People just call me CP.”

CP. Ok. The spirit realm seems to have far more informal naming conventions than I had realized. And dress sense too. CP was wearing a lot of beads that rattled in a disturbing manner.

“CP, what do you want me to do?”

“Do? You don’t have to do anything bro, just watch.”

Before I could ask watch what, he tossed me a bead. Which I failed to catch. Although it bounced off my forehead, and apparently that was enough to have the desired effect. The hallway melted away to reveal an all enveloping environment of…me at my bench, back in my workshop.

“We could have just used the door and walked in CP.”

“No man, we couldn’t. Take a look at the clock.”

“It’s after midnight. It’s Christmas.”

“Yeah, and where are you?”

“Still at my bench,” I said with some remorse.

CP took that moment of introspection to bounce another bead off my head. I gave him a sharp look, but before I had honed my glare the room had morphed again. I was still there at my bench.

“Big deal, we’re still here and that’s still me. Can I hear me?”

“No and no, bro. We’ve gone back a year, and no you can’t hear you. Or me. Or see us either. Notice where you are.”

I gave him a quizzical look and answered blankly, “At my bench?”

“At your bench on Christmas Eve last year too.”

I stared at myself. My hairline had receded a lot over the year. CP took my inattention to him to throw one bead after another at my head. I tried to intercept them by flailing my arms, but to no avail.

“Hey, cut that out!”

While shielding my head a series of all encompassing images flashed before my eyes: me here at Christmas Eve two years ago, then me here at Christmas Eve three years ago, and so on and so on right back to the time when I set up this place.

“Ok. I get it. I’m here a lot over Christmas.”

“And not just Christmas just so you know. And did you take a look at that wall?”

CP pointed over to the kit stash wall. We were still immersed in my first Christmas Eve scenario and there were only a couple of kits on the shelves.

“Let’s fast forward back where we came from, shall we,” asked CP in a not asking way.

I covered my head expecting to have beads rained on me, but CP had a new trick. He snapped his fingers for a time shift. At each snap through the Christmas Eves, that kit stash shelf grew fuller and fuller until we arrived back to the present where the shelves were completely full. 

“Ok, I get that too. The unbuilt kit stash has grown over the years.”

“Dude, grown is a bit of an understatement.”

CP snapped his fingers one last time and we were back in the hallway. 

I looked around to confirm this was indeed the present, and then had to ask the obvious, “I assume there’s one more of you guys that I have to see?”

CP adopted a tone that completely contradicted his happy go lucky hippy beads; “Dude, he’s not just one of us guys. He’s The Guy. You should probably go back to your workshop and sit down and rest before he gets here.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

The Guy

I used to think it was the future, or maybe just thinking about the future, that gave me stress. No, the real stressor was meeting The Guy, aka, The Ghost of Christmas Future.

I went back to the workshop as CP advised, plopped myself in my chair behind the bench, and waited. Did I fall asleep? Faint? Black out? Damned if I know. All I know for sure is The Guy stood right where Al had been who knows how long ago. No wailing and flailing from The Guy though. He didn’t need histrionics to chill me to the bone. It was all in his vibe.

The Guy was tall and stood there in a black, hooded, monk-like robe; he never looked at me, just towered. I tried to summon some courage, figuring the sooner I did, the sooner this would all be over. I looked up at him and croaked, “What do you want?” 

He didn’t answer, just pointed to the obscenely full kit stash wall, and then swept his arm over to point at the model train layout, before directing my gaze to the build table littered with unfinished projects. As he swept his arm, colours changed, objects came and went, and all sorts of people appeared and disappeared. It was like a stage set had suddenly materialized that sort of looked like my workshop, but sort of didn’t, and was populated by actors I’d never seen before. Unlike The Guy though, they all had speaking roles:

Man #1: Look lady, I’ll give you a grand for the works.

Woman: A grand! It’s worth at least ten. There’s all kinds of rare items in here.

Man #2: Most of it’s junk.

I looked over to The Guy aghast, “Junk!”

Man #1: That layout looks like it hasn’t been run in years. Look at that dust.

Woman: How about five?

Man #1: How about fifteen hundred?

Woman: Two grand?

Man #1: Fifteen hundred and we won’t charge you to haul it all away.

Man #2: And we can break up that layout and toss it in the dumpster on our way out.

Woman: Ok.

“Fifteen hundred!? Break it up? Dumpster? Good lord!” I said to no one in particular.

The Guy peered down at me. I looked up at him. There was some sort of void where his face should have been. I looked away real fast.

They say you shouldn’t stare into the void, and that’s good advice as far as it goes. But, maybe the void isn’t so bad when the only alternative is having The Guy direct your gaze to your own headstone.

At least The Guy wasn’t cruel. After falling to my knees while sobbing uncontrollably, but before I had time to rend my own flesh, he diverted my attention with the sight of two hideous trolls, one to each side of my headstone, and allowed me to hear him speak.

“This one is the procrastinating modeller,” he said pointing to the left troll, “and this one,” pointing to the right troll, “is the armchair modeller. Of the two, beware the joy-deferring procrastinating modeller the most.”

Christmas

I woke up under the workbench. Even after a bender, I’d never done that before. I crawled out and looked up at the clock. Its hands were on the floor. It wasn’t giving away any time today.

I went to the window and pulled up the sash. I saw a boy in the street. 

I leaned out the window and shouted down to him, “Hey you, what day is it?”

He looked up and replied, “It’s Christmas Day of course! Are you drunk?”

Drunk? No, but I was giddy. I pulled out of the window, peered across the bench to look for The Guy, and upon not seeing him, danced a jig around the workshop. I wasn’t dead after all. The kit stash wall was still full, the model railroad was still there, and the unfinished projects were still on the layout table.

I ran back to the window and shouted to the boy before he walked away, “Wait there a sec!”

I left the window, grabbed some kits from the stash wall, and then, returning to my window perch, with a hearty “Merry Christmas” tossed them down to the waiting boy. 

The first one hit him on the head, and elicited an exclamation of “Hey, watch it you old fart!” But, seeing the array of fine kits on the ground, his tune soon changed to a cheerful, “Thanks mister!”

And so I spent the day tossing kits out the window to bewildered passers-by, hoping that in the process a few would be introduced to the joy of model making. 

And when the stash was gone, I dusted off the layout, got rid of irrelevant unfinished projects, and left before sundown, shouting to all in my vicinity, “A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

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*My sincerest apologies to Charles Dickens and all the A Christmas Carol variations from which I lifted.