Organization – 78 Miles to Yosemite

Along with changes to scale, as I have cleaned up/out the workshop, it has become obvious that, with storage at a premium, our workshops here have needed upgrading/updating again. Lots of equipment, both individual and shared, has for a long time been stored in drawers and caddies that are not easily mobile, and I’ve found myself up and down from the work space more than I’d like to be, and tripping over cords more than I’d like to be as well.

With fixing those issues in mind, I started hunting for portable workshops. Unfortunately I appear to have missed out on some fantastic portable shops from a company in Span, but their portable workshops inspired more hunting and gave me some ideas of what I was hunting for.

I eventually hit on what folks in the hobby of slot cars and RC cars call a “pit box”. These are typically made with spots to store race cars and tools, but I found a gentleman who makes them and who was willing to customize a pair of them with removal of the slot car storage and addition of other drawers.

The view when open as I move into the new storage.

I’ve spent a few days now moving into this box, and found some improvements I plan to make. First, I added some magnets so I can easily store my scale ruler. Secondly, because the boxes are heavy to begin with being built of 3/4” plywood, and fully loaded they’re even heavier, I plan to swap the single top handle out for two heavy duty side-mounted handles.

I’m really happy to have everything tool wise now at my easy reach. We’re closing in on the end of the reorganization of the shop and modeling items, so in short order now it will be time to sit down and build some Proto:48 equipment. I can’t wait!

-Jeremy

It’s time once again to look at the modeling year ahead. I learned a lot in the last 12 months, and my plan for the year ahead includes putting into practice a few things that I want to change in order to make my modeling even better.

One thing I have been trying to do for a long time is to get even more organized when it comes to planning a project, from freight car to structure. Stuff tends to fly around and be out of control until I’m focusing on what the “next step” is, and then I’m waiting on parts or waiting on decals, etc….

To address that issue this year, I plan to do two things. First, I plan to work on smaller batches of projects. It makes sense to me to work on more than one thing at a time. When I have equipment set up to do work on brakes, or for drilling, or for decals, it makes sense to do more than one car at a time. However, fewer than 19 all at once is probably better. It took me most of a weekend to polish the wheels I put on cars this year, and I really would like to not make as much green dust from the Vert polish all at once. I think a “manageable” size for a batch of cars are the 6 cars I can fit in one of my storage trays at a time. If I can get 6 cars started, built, detailed, primed, painted, lettered, and finished, then move on to the next batch of 6, I feel like I can make progress without stalling out because I’ll see the progress along the way.

The second thing I’m working on now, before I start building, is to get projects organized on paper. Anything I need to order, change, add, etc… to a car get’s listed on the page, and the page can be either printed or referenced on my cloud. The eventual goal is to collect information sheets on each model, listing the parts and changes, but also the history of the car, and a prototype photo or drawing that I’m working from. In the end, the sheets will be printed with the prototype info and the model info and can be my display at an RPM where the cars are shown.

This is an example of the initial setup sheet I’m doing for each car. This one may wind up in my 2nd or 3rd batches of 6 cars at a time this year, but the general idea of tracking everything that I need or need to do on a project in one spot will make things easier to manage when it comes to starting a project and getting it finished.

With parts inbound for the first 6 cars, and arriving before the weekend, I’m hoping to sit down and get a good start on everything.

The first 6 cars for this year are:

A pair of ACL K-7 low side gondolas

A BAR 1927 A.R.A boxcar

A Central Vermont 36’ boxcar

A SSW USRA DS clone

A Norfolk & Western bobber-style caboose

In keeping with my pledge to myself that for every box car I build, I’ll build 1 of another car type this year, that’s 3 boxcars and 3 others. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this batch, and then what I pull out of the kit stash for the next group.

-JD

Category: Organization

A New Workshop

Improving Processes