Convention 2010 part 2

A little more from the convention. I wasn't able to attend for the entire day today, with work commitments and so forth, but I managed to spend a few hours over there. I has a couple more good discussion about the scale, and was able to catch up with Greg (Weeduggie) about the developments he is making. Russell from Trackgang also showed me the method for installing the new bearings he is including with his kits, and these give a very obvious improvement in performance.

Here are a couple more pictures, first one of Russell and his Trackgang table, and second of the excellent Kai Iwi Tunnel layout adjacent to our setup:





The convention has also been the prompt for a little thought on my part, so the following is an account of some of my recent cogitations.

First off, my big disappointment at the convention is not being able to run the layout because of its partially completed state. Of course this can't be helped given that I've only been building the thing for five months, but it has fueled my enthusiasm for finishing enough modules to form a loop to make running practicable.

At the least, this means five further sections, but ideally another seven, with four sections for the end pieces, and three for the other side of the loop. I've already got a number of ideas for what to put on the other sections scenic-wise, but I think I have decided to concentrate in the next six months on getting the framework built and track laid so to have a functioning layout. Then I can move on to the scenic work. I'll spend a bit of time soon calculating the amount of timber I'll need for the other sections (obviously it will be something like twice the amount that went into the current three sections). Hopefully I can get the materials and make a start on building these in the next couple of months.

Second, I've had a few thoughts about the scope of the scale for modelling. Looking around at the quality of the other modular layouts on display at the convention, I think our stuff compares very nicely, and it strikes me that our scale has a number of advantages, most obviously in terms of what can be put into a given space. Even though in comparison our scale looks quite dinky, I don't think you need to compromise in term of the level of detail you can put in NZ120.

There is occasionally talk about NZ120 being a "two foot scale" in that it's sufficient that it looks good from this distance and gives a good general impression. I'm not sure I agree with this, and in fact I think it sells the scale short in that there is plenty of potential to build detailed models that bear very close scrutiny. One of the most impressive things I've seen at the scale are Weeduggie's brass etches for various small locos. These look excellent, and I think that once they are built up and detailed, that they will build into very nice and detailed models.

We train modelers could improve the finishing we give our models. Even looking at some of the competition entries at the convention, I was struck by how the standard of much of the painting was not very good, and this really let down some otherwise fine models. We have a lot to learn from the painting and weathering techniques used in aircraft kitset modelling, I think. Some rail modelers seem very slow to adopt airbrushes for example, even though these provide vastly improved finishes over brush painting. Perhaps taking our scale to the next level should not merely be a matter of refining prototypical accuracy and the scale standards, but in refining the aesthetics of our models?