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.
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