Morningstar's Musings: In the beginning...

Well, here goes.
Now a good friend of mine says this can be quite a fun pastime.
Hopefully you'll get some enjoyment out of my musings on N Gauge and other Railways, Plastic & Resin kit modelling in various scales but mainly 1:144.

My background from way back has been engineering biased, it's in the blood it would seem at least 3 generations of some sort of engineering before me. These days I test computer software, rather fix things with hammers and spanners. But I still like to tinker, with engineering and electronic projects.

A long time ago my bedroom ceiling was veritable squadron of aircraft, my shelves a haven for tanks, boat and all sorts of other models. Then as you do you grow up and stop doing model making and playing with trains as its kids stuff. Then you get to that age when you think I need to fill an evening with something other than watching the tv or cruising the internet aimlessly and there in the back of your head is that old model maker sat in the dark covered in dust just waiting to be awoken by the whiff of a poly-cement and enamel thinners.

When I first left home and moved into my own house I decided to build a model railway to fill the spare bedroom. As a single middle aged bloke with money to waste, I decided to build the biggest model railway I could get in the spare bedroom, 10 foot x 4 foot.

Well being single didn't last long and neither did the modelling budget. We moved in to a new house about 5 years ago now and the railway has hardly been touched in all that time, I go through spurts of activity with the railway.

Now this brings me on to how I've got back into making kit models, I like to collect weird and strange railway rolling stock, and thats when I stumbled on Leopold and Dora two huge WW2 railway gun kits in 1:144 scale and decide I would build them for a laugh. Now British N gauge railway is 1:148 and we already freely fish in the 1:144 scale modellers pool for vehicles. I have the makings of small modern (70's/80's) Military force that I was planning to use on my railway, as my railway is based on the local station and we had a large military vehicle depot only few miles away that was rail served it seemed to make sense.

Well 28cm Krupp K5(E) Leopold has been built and just needs painting and mounting on a diorama, I went as far as re-wheeling it so that it would/could run on N gauge track. A diorama with just a gun on it is a bit dull so one thing has led to another and I have a stack of kits that now need making...