A day or so ago YouTube's algorithm recommended this video to me. I was intrigued and watched it. It reminded my of the Full Observation post from a few years back, but had a lot of other interesting things to say.
So, I went and had a look through Sam Hamper's videos and thought the title of this one, Find Meaning Through Making, intriguing so I had a look:
There is a little self-promotion inside, but, hey, everyone's got to make a living, and it isn't obnoxious. Again, I found it quite intriguing, especially his discussion on trying to have a thoughtful and nuanced look at AI regarding art.
That lead me to this interview with the creator of the Chloe vs History videos, Jonathan Laramie:
Again, intrigued, because if what Mr. Laramie said is true, then it should be possible to recreate a 'functioning' E. L. Moore's Elizabeth Valley Railroad through the use of AI. There is enough reference material to do so. Regular readers may recall I made an attempt simply to colourize some photographs of the EVRR, but ran into some issues I didn't know how to resolve. This interview suggests the answer is out there, I just need to buckle down and do the work.
Ok, so after the interview I thought I should have a look at one of the Chloe videos and settled on I time travelled to Ancient Rome:
Entertaining as well as intriguing. Implications-wise, there's lots to think about. And, also, Majestic Studios is here.
Check out the entries to the 'Back to Basics Model Railway Challenge'. You may recall I was inspired to give it a go and build a model of the Community Garden shed in response. That shed makes an appearance at around the 7:13 mark. There're lots of interesting contributions in the video, and it looks like the challenge was well received.
Ron Tarjany's instructions for building simple sheds in Railroad Modeler, Dec '74 That's my community garden shed below the template for his HO-scale shed.
I was browsing the 1974 issues of Railroad Modelerand came across this Penny Model feature on building Railroad Storage Sheds in the December issue. You may recall I wrote about the Penny Model feature back in 2020. This 10 instalment feature that ran from '74 to '77 dealt with how make a variety of buildings from simple, low cost materials. This one on railroad storage sheds reminded me of the Back to Basics Railway Modelling Challenge and my attempt to build a little garden shed using methods similar to the ones shown in this article.
Mr. Tarjany explains how to build little sheds using the walls-folded-up-from-a-continuous-piece-of-card method, but instead of using the card's outer surface to directly apply exterior wall treatments, he glues on overlays of wood or corrugated metal. The card roofs also have overlays glued on. This allows him to use "index file cardstock", which looks like standard, thin 3x5 file card in the above photo. In my community garden shed build I only used 3x5 card for trim.
File this article under: Everything Old is New Again.
I immediately thought this was right up my alley. I need to build a model of the city's storage shed at the community garden for my new micro-layout of the place, and readers here know I love anything that has a back-to-basics vibe. This being the case I figured I'd give the challenge a go by building that storage shed.
So, up there is a view of the shed I'm talking about. It's located about in the middle of the community garden, beside the car path, not far off the walking path.
The image above gives a better sense of the shed's location near the road, and you can get a feel for its size comparing it to the car.
As buildings go, it's dead simple. The doors and windows are on the front wall, and the other walls have no openings other than the air vents in the end walls near the roof.
Ok, so on with the show.
The first stop was the kitchen's paper recycling bin. I had recently finished off some delicious dark chocolate, and thought the cardboard package might be good for the walls and roof. Other materials used were a standard 3x5 note card for trim, doors, and roof ridges, and a piece of 2mm thick cardboard for the foundation cut from the backing of an old sketchpad.
I carefully sliced through the bonds and unfolded the chocolate packaging to have a look at what I had to work with. It's a rather low grade material, and I estimate around 0.5mm to 0.75mm thick. I usually like to use artist grade, multi-ply Bristol board for this sort of project, but I wanted to stick to the spirit of the challenge*.
Before getting on with construction I had to come up with a drawing to figure out dimensions and shapes.
I rarely draw fancy plans as I just use them to work out dimensions. All dimensions shown are in mm.
Ok, a couple of things.
First, I could have walked over to the garden and measured the shed, but I'll plead being a wimp that there was too much snow and cold for such Roye England style action, so instead I guesstimated the dimensions from the photos. Look, I would have had to compress the building a little and take some liberties to make it seem a reasonable fit on the layout anyway, so no loss really.
Second, HO scale is a weird scale. 3.5mm = 1'-0"? Come on! Basically, to scale anything on a plan one needs a calculator nearby to do conversions to HO. Unless of course you have a special ruler marked out for HO scale. I have my trusty one I bought at George's Trains in the '70s. But, if you're just getting started with scratchbuilding, and only have a ruler from the kitchen drawer, it's a bit tough laying out plans. I struggled with how many specialized tools I should use because beginners might not have them. So, on the plans I approximated dimensions so that they'd measure to whole or half mms. Frankly, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that with a standard desk ruler anything more accurate than 0.5mm can be measured. So, if some trim looks a little chunky, this is why. My advice though is if you're going to really get into making HO scale buildings from scratch, whether using simple or advanced materials, go and buy an HO-scale ruler, and make sure you get a steel one, not plastic.
Blue paper rectangle is the shed's footprint.
Once I settled on dimensions I cut a little rectangle of blue paper the same size as the building's footprint and placed it on the layout plan to assess the size relative to other layout features. It looked ok.
I then drew the walls on the cardboard. I decided to cut out individual walls and then glue them into a box instead of laying them out in a contiguous strip and folding them into a box as I've often done in the past. The thing I don't quite like with the folding method is I can never get the folded corners to be sharp and square.
The other piece of specialized equipment* you need is an art knife and some spare blades. There's really no other way to manually cut out cardboard with the precision needed. I use an Olfa brand one. Don't be skimpy with the blades. Always start off a project with a sharp, new blade. It makes cutting clean and precise, and it's safer too because you don't need to apply as much pressure as you would with a dull blade, thereby reducing the chance of slipping and cutting yourself.
You can see I didn't cut out an opening for the doors, but did so for the windows. I didn't want opening doors so I left the wall intact, but I'm eventually going to install lights, so I want to see them glow through the windows. If you don't have lights in mind, you could skip cutting out the window openings and instead use a Sharpie pen to blacken them.
The siding was scored into the walls using the back, dull side, of the art knife.
I always mark the pieces I need to cut out with Xs so I don't get lost in all those lines!
The trim was drawn on a standard 3x5 note card. The window and door trim, along with the doors, I laid out and cut as a one piece overlay. I decided not to assemble the front trim and door from individual pieces to keep the building a little more beginner friendly. I penciled in the various dividing lines once the trim was painted. Over on the right side of the card are some individual trim strips for the corners.
After cutting out the front overlay I test fit it to the wall. Not bad. I decided to score the dividing lines between the various elements to give them a little definition.
As you can see I went ahead and painted the walls while I was working on the trim.
In keeping with the spirit of the challenge I didn't go out and buy paints to match the prototype, and since I didn't have any similar colours on hand, I picked some from my shelf that I thought looked ok. I used Revell Aqua Color Fern Green 36360, and Tamyia Yellow Green XF-4. They were painted on with a brush.
The window muntins are made from strips of masking tape.
Stick a piece of masking tape to your cutting pad and slice off a number of 1mm wide strips, make them thinner if you can. I eyeballed the dimensions on mine so they're somewhere between 0.5mm and 1mm wide.
Then stick the strips to the inside front wall. Again, I just eyeballed their location, so if they look wonky, that's why :-)
Here's the front wall overlay after painting. I strengthened the divisions between pieces with lines drawn with a sharp pencil. I later came in and penciled in some shadows to produce a little 3-D illusion. Also, I later drew on hinges and the door hasp with a black Sharpie pen.
Around about this point in the project I started gluing components together. I had some white glue and weldbond in the workshop so that's what I used to keep in the back-to-basics spirit of the challenge. Normally I prefer to use transfer tape for attaching overlays because it bonds instantly, and since it's a dry process there's no chance of warping components being stuck together. It turns out the front wall did warp a little after using white glue to stick on the trim overlay. I did a little remediation on that, which I'll get to in a moment. I used weldbond for the 'structural work' of attaching the walls and roof together. It's thicker and stronger and faster drying than white glue.
Source of window 'glass'.
Once the front wall overlay was glued in place I added some 'plastic glass' to the windows cut from the top of a box of chocolates from many Christmases past.
The roof was cut from the same cardboard used for the walls. The metal ridges in the roof were simulated with 1mm wide strips cut from 3x5 card. White glue was used to stick them down.
The roof cap is a 3mm wide strip also cut from 3x5 card. The photo above shows a test fit of the roof before it was painted.
Ok, as we near the end of this project I couldn't put off any longer trying to take the warp out of the front wall. I cut an interior wall from the 2mm thick sketchbook backing cardboard I figured I'd use for the floor. I tried to unwarp the front wall with my fingers as best I could, then glued the interior wall in place with weldbond to keep the wall unwarped, and finally applied clamps and let the whole thing setup for an hour.
So, this is one of the problems with these cheap-and-cheerful builds. The cardboard I used for the walls was a bit too thin and it wasn't of good quality, both of which made the walls susceptible to warping from applications of glue and paint. Over the years I've minimized the chance of this happening by using artist grade, multi-ply Bristol board and transfer tape. If you're going to get into card-based scratchbuilding I recommend using those materials.
Interior 'de-wowing' partition glued in place. Still some 'wow' though :-(
As my father would say, the wall has still got a bit of a 'wow' in it, partly because I didn't get the width of the interior wall quite right. Well, it's rather a rigid structure now, and honestly, when the roof is on, and it's sitting on the layout, what's left of the warp isn't noticeable. It's the digital camera being a harsh mistress and showing every flaw up close in a way that isn't observable with the naked eye.
There're a couple of other things I should point out in the above photo. First, after the building was glued together I painted the inside black. I plan to put a couple lights inside, and wanted to minimize the chance of the walls glowing when the lights were on because the walls are so thin.
Second, I reinforced the inside corners of the building with some wood sticks.
Normally I'd do that with some scrap balsa or basswood, but to continue with the back-to-basics theme I took a craft stick - a wood coffee stir stick would work too - and sliced off the sides to make some corner reinforcements. Using the factory made straight edges on those slices I glued pieces into the building's corners to stiffen them.
The last piece is the foundation. It's cut from 2mm thick cardboard. I drilled two holes in it so I can poke some lights in later.
All that was left to do was glue the foundation and roof to the walls, and bingo, it was done!
And there it is, just a few seconds after the roof was glued on.
I think this post must have taken just as long to write as it did to build the little model :-) It was made over a 4 day period, 11 March to 14 March, by stitching together pieces of time. In total it took something like 6 to 8 hours to build.
The shed's future home.
There it is on what will be its home on the community garden layout. It looks quite large, but once the tall trees and other scenic elements are in place it'll blend in.
Cost? That's always a tricky thing to estimate. In one sense, almost nothing given that the materials were cast-offs, and I made use of paints, glues, and simple tools* I had in the workshop. But, here's the problem: those items cost something at one time. Construction of these sorts of models have only become low cost for me as I continue to use stuff I've already bought and paid for. If this model weren't built in the spirit of a challenge where the emphasis is more-or-less on rudimentary bricolage, I would have used artist grade Bristol board, transfer tape, balsa, and bought paint to match the colours on the prototype. That would have increased the cost. New paint alone would have increased the project cost by several hundred percent :-)
On the layout the walking path will be centred on a diagonal that runs from one corner to the other, and the shed will face it. There won't be a path for cars on the layout. It's been replaced by the little train.
Well, there's the first structure for the new layout. I quite liked this little challenge as it helped inspire further work on the layout, and was a nice lift out of the winter blues.
* I was a bit conflicted with this project as to what tools and materials to use. Should I use my usual ones, which are a bit specialized, or go with a simpler, basic set of tools and materials that a beginner might have? In the end I went with mainly basic, but pulled out some more 'advanced' ones when I felt I was getting frustrated.
You can see some of my 'advanced' tools in this photo I took of my workspace as the end of the project neared. I say 'advanced' because many modellers wouldn't consider them advanced at all. So, for the advanced ones I pulled out things like: a cutting pad, mechanical pencils, ruler marked in HO-scale, miniature speed squares and set square, sanding sticks, clamps, and tweezers. I think that covers it.
If you're going in for scratchbuilding miniature buildings I say get those 'advanced' tools as they'll make projects easier and more fun. I highly recommend scratchbuilding over any sort of kit work - ok, well, I'll cut kitbashing some slack :-) - because once you've got the basic principles learned you can build anything you want. You're not limited by what companies want to sell you. And if you can master using basic tools and basic materials, you won't be limited by cost either because you'll be able to use just about anything.
Ok, I've proselytized enough :-)
[25 March 2026 Update: I built a second version of this shed using whatever I could scrounge from the workshop regardless of it being beginner friendly: Community Garden Shed, Take 2: Lowe Tech Bricolage.]
Test assembly after lifting. Nothing is glued together.
At the end of the last instalment I thought I'd move on to smoothing out the seams in the pickup box. I did a little putty work, but then thought, why avoid the next big job, just get on with it.
So I did.
The 'prototype' from Car Model magazine, Sept '72. To me the stance is hyperactive.
Lift it that is.
But not too much.
Even when I was 12 I thought the body sat too high above the wheels, so when I raised it I figured I wouldn't raise it as much as the one in the magazine.
Ok, so let's get going.
The box stock chassis before shortening
There are two steps:
1. Shorten the chassis because I shortened the pickup box.
2. Lift the chassis because we're goin' Baja!
First thing: cut out the gas tank. The 'prototype's' gas tank is in the pickup box.
MPC kits were my brand back in the '70s when I was obsessed with building plastic model car kits. I liked their subjects and the pieces always seemed to be clean, sharply moulded, and unwarped, all of which made for a good assembly experience. Revell kits, at least the ones I bought, were a crap-shoot. It was always 50:50 odds a kit's body would be horribly warped, or the parts would be blobby, or some other insult had been inflicted on the parts that would require superhuman modelling skills I didn't possess to properly fix the thing. It was heartbreaking as I didn't just like Revell's subjects, I loved them, but they didn't always reciprocate. I built plenty of AMT too - I just saw a re-release of an old flame which likely will show up here next year - but there was something about their kits that never got a strong reaction out of me save for a rare few.
There were a couple of Christmases where I received MPC kits as presents and was very happy. Christmas was the only time I had a stash! I might receive 2 or 3 kits and there it was: a 2 or 3 kit stash! Normally I would buy and build immediately. I never suffered from the embarrassment of excess kit build up in the basement region :-)
After much measuring and marking and soul searching, the saw is drawn, the cuts are made. Shortness is obtained.
So, this Dodge is an MPC and a re-pop of more-or-less the kit I built in '72, less a few custom parts for the Baja Brute version. It's showing its age. There's considerable flash to clean up, and the chassis in the pickup box area is a little warped. These aren't big things and are easily corrected, but it's clear time has passed on these moulds.
Reuniting the severed parts with soothing styrene glue and an impromptu jig
Shortening the chassis and lifting the body is not overly complicated stuff, but the old CM article is very misleading as it leaves these steps out and concentrates on what I'd call detailing. That is interesting stuff, but hardly the meat and potatoes of this build. Maybe the article was just filler to boost the page count to their minimum, or maybe the magazine was too long and they cut the mundane part of the project, or maybe they ran the article to promote a new kit, or something else? We'll never know.
Reunited and it looks so good: A bond to build a dream on.
On the way to this point in the build I was thinking about how a real vehicle of this sort would be constructed to accommodate a shorter box and lift. I knew mine wasn't quite right. I started to fret about it as a modern modeller would who is browbeaten by the unyielding scrutiny of digital cameras and the internet. But, I had done all this cutting and gluing and having fun and didn't care anymore. Worrying about reality was spoiling the fun of building.
I decided just to proceed based on what looked interesting to me. I'd add greeblies and details and paint as I felt necessary get the look I'm after. I'd check for real life practices if that became a concern, but I wasn't going to let that dominate the project.
It was a breakthrough of sorts.
Reconstruction begins: A piece of 0.040" thick styrene is rough cut to fill the gas tank hole.
And that I realized was the hidden message from 1972.
Back then I got pleasure from these projects when I tried hard to make them as 'realistic' as possible. Getting pleasure in that manner isn't what I'm after these days. There's so much prototype information readily available today it makes kit assembly seem merely like the final stages in an industrial process to assemble the kit in accordance with all that information. Well, at least it seems that way for me. These days I want them to look as interesting to me as possible. What 'interesting' means is going to vary from one project to the next.
0.250" tall styrene blocks were added between springs and chassis. Prototypical? Nah.
As far as this Desert Dodge is concerned it was interesting just to slip into a flow state of mind and work on lifting the chassis without prototypical worries.
Interesting? Yeah!
Given the fun I'm having modifying this pickup I'm thinking of doing the long delayed custom RDC project.
I'll tell you straight away that this video isn't directly about model railroading or model making of any kind, but it's indeed all about model making :-) If you're a scratchbuilder, kit assembler, model customizer, or any sort of model maker you should watch this video. And if you're not? You especially should watch it.
One last thing. Even though my last name is of English origin I have Scottish DNA in me, which maybe is the reason I particularly appreciate her low-key, no-nonsense commentary later in the video.
I've been spending some spare moments building out the foam support structure of Inspiration Point. I've added a narrow and steep hiking trail that starts at the trolley stub and switches back a few times on its way to the lookout. Although the path isn't prototypical I wanted one that was a bit treacherous and scary, even if I had to exaggerate it a little. This part of the mountain is glued up from scraps of foam I've kept around for just such a purpose.
While looking for a post this morning I accidentally pulled up this one from just about 2 years ago. I'd forgotten about it, but after re-reading the list I realized that this layout more or less captures many of the points called out in the post. Spooky.
Written by Ian Marchant; published 2003 by New Holland Publishers
I remember as a child, aged perhaps eight or nine, being taken by my grandmother to visit an elderly neighbour of hers - a kindly old countryman with nut brown skin, twinkling blue eyes, and the strong hands of a craftsman. I was taken to visit this paragon (I can no longer remember his name) because he made beautiful models of gypsy caravans from used matchsticks. Around the walls was ranged a matchwood caravanersai: brightly painted boxtops, elegant Reading wagons and gaudy showman’s vans.
Sitting in the old man’s sunlit parlour that afternoon, surrounded by the fruit of a lifetime’s work, I thought to myself, ’Stupid old fool. Why on earth would anybody go to all the bother of sticking together hundreds of matchsticks, when you could get a nice kit at the toyshop for two-and-six?’
He died a few months after our meeting, just as the new money came in, from a smoking related illness.
How naive I was. Plastic construction kits, which were what lads of my generation thought of as ‘models’, were, in fact, a very new phenomenon. Older people, if they wanted to make models, didn’t have kits, they had matchsticks, or lollipop sticks, or cardboard and balsa. They had tissue paper and flour and water. Above all, they had skill and patience. Growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, we had neither. We had Airfix.
From the introduction to Ian Marchant's Men and Models.
I came across this book last year. It wasn't quite what I expected, but it turned out to be a fun and quick read about, as the title says, some men and the models they've built.
In August 1987 I was to lucky to get to visit the Exploratorium in San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. For a souvenir I bought a copy of the pamphlet, Working Prototypes: Exhibit Design at the Exploratorium. As I was reading the book again I wondered what I might learn if I replaced the word ‘exhibit’ with ‘layout’ in the list of exhibit development principles and characteristics that appears in the conclusion. Here’s what I get:
1. Basic research - just plain tinkering around with something for the fun of it - is an essential part of the layout development process.
2. Layouts are designed and developed by people who are interested in the phenomenon to be displayed.
3. To some extent, all layouts are collaborative: many people make suggestions and contribute ideas.
4. The first stage of layout design is the construction of a full-scale working prototype.
5. Layout builders are responsive to comments from visitors and staff, testing layouts at many stages in their development and allowing reactions to shape the layout.
6. Layout builders pay attention to aesthetic nuances, noticing what is fun to do, what is beautiful, what is intriguing.
7. Generally, layout builders try not to restrict a visitor’s choice.
8. Ideally, visitors should be able to see the inner workings of a layout and make discoveries about how the layout works.
9. Most layouts are set up on table tops, so that visitors can gather and use the layout together.
10. Layouts are often constructed of inexpensive materials, scrap, and found objects (or junk).
I can’t say that every item makes sense for a layout, but that’s not the point, which is just to stir the brain up a bit.
I found what seems like an addendum to item 8) noted in K. C. Coles’ 2009 book, Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up, quite interesting:
Anything involving computers was likely to be rejected out of hand. “There’s nothing a computer can do that I want done,” Frank said. Everything a computer did was a simulation, and therefore not sufficiently transparent - or even “honest” - by Frank’s lights. You couldn’t see what was going on inside the box. Besides, he thought computers were both passive and addictive. And new technology - as he learned at Los Alamos - could all too easily entrap.
While trying to figure out which 1928 issue of Meccano Magazine had the Meccano soccer ball article I stumbled across a story called Miniature Railway Accessories in the January issue. As the title says, it's about making buildings and bridges and such things for model railways, but not from Meccano, from cardboard.
I've been trying to find the first magazine articles that discuss making miniature buildings from Bristol board (I've made a few posts here, here, here, here, and here on historical approaches to using cardboard for miniature building construction) and thought this might be one.
No such luck, but the article is interesting nevertheless. The material used is lined strawboard:
As cardboard provides the whole of the building material, it is necessary that it should be of good quality in order to secure the necessary rigidity. Suitable cardboard for the purpose may be bought from any paper and cardboard dealer or even from a local printer or bookbinder. Trouble will be saved if the correct specification is given when ordering namely, “three 30in. by 40 in. or four 22 in. by 32 in., 1 lb. white lined strawboard.”
The term “lined” signifies that one side of the strawboard is covered with white or tinted paper, and this type of board is similar to that used in the making of chocolate boxes and boot boxes. Although the lining is really introduced to prevent the cardboard curling or altering its shape, it will be found easier and more interesting to draw the necessary plans on the white or coloured surface than upon the board itself with its colour of dirty straw.
The author goes on to demonstrate his building technique by constructing a viaduct. It makes use of tabs and glue to hold the structure together and provide rigidity. No mention of scale is made, but given the year, and that this is a Hornby publication, I’m assuming it’s Gauge 0 from the look of the little layout.
