Prairie day-dreams…

This morning I’m lying on the sofa as the house moves around me day dreaming of sleepy tired prairie branchline railroads…

Delisle, Saskatchewan July 1989. Photo Keith Hilton

I remember driving alongside these ribbons of steel for hours during our first family adventure to Canada in 1989. I very rarely saw anything but lonely grain cars standing at small town elevators, polished rails the only sign of life in an otherwise strangely quiet and timeless scene.

Although I saw many many more trains in the Rockies (I guess as you’d expect in terms of trains versus track density) looking back my heart is drawn to these flat horizon vistas and the feel of the baking sun, the sound of crickets in the grass and the quench of an ice cold Pepsi.

Nostalgia and inspiration come in many forms. Connecting and immersing ourselves in these feelings, these memories can be both a wonderful balm as well as a motivational driving force behind what we create and share with others. Explaining this here, on my blog, is practice, a chance for me to tap into and articulate those feelings. I still haven’t built a prairie based model, despite pen tracing familiar lines over paper I’ve never quite found the right way to experience such a scene, however I wonder what you’re own experiences tell you about your own modelling? 

Until next time, more soon…

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