Mchowisko in 009 and what I learnt...
This shouldn't have happened. I have plenty of other projects here - so why, dear reader, are you looking at some 009 track buried in grass?
I've had a soft spot for Polish narrow gauge on and off for many years - in my collection, two models which will never find another home are the Px48 and Lyd2 models - but these larger prototypes have always been a side show to the Purbeck inspired layouts that became reality.
What if they found a home? The sketches based upon Sroda last year had that destination in mind.
Why are we looking at a Mosslanda then?
The short answer is because I took my daughter to IKEA the other week and they were selling them for just £4... one found its way here... I was working on the coach in the image and placed it on the empty shelf... the seed was planted. This could work, 4mm scale COULD work on a Mosslanda.
It would need to be a minimal scene, a flat landscape... Polish sugar beet fields perhaps?
The playful mind toyed with how to name this project, a play on Mosslanda perhaps? Moss land translates to Mchowisko (Mmm-cho-vis-ko I think, but don't hold me to it). The construction came together in just 48 hours. Track, back scene and trees were to hand to allow quick progress. LEDs and wiring loom recycled from the Ffesty box I have thrown out but you know...
It’s funny.
I love the track but the lack of a story leaves me cold.
I was consumed by making it but didn’t stop to wonder why…
Maybe I had to make it rather than keep it?
I don’t think it was about seeing if it was possible…
Maybe more about the purest of urges to calm a racing mind.
I’ve tried reading. I’ve tried walking. I’ve tried train spotting… so now fuelled by anxious energy I’ve tried building a Mosslanda.
It didn’t work.
It did occupy me.
It did provide a mindful escape at times but because of the urgency in its creation I recognise now that I didn’t stop to catch a breath.
So what future for Mchowisko? It currently is back to the lonely tree composition (but I think I do like the framing effect of the others, so will add them back). The trees need painting properly and I will make a simple station name board - perhaps a touch of a bush or something somewhere. It will serve as an encouragement to the longer term project, a photo plank, a place to remember how much I've learnt about track weathering and most of all, to get lost with the Lyd2 just for a moment.
So that warrants a few more posts I suppose but for now, until next time, more soon...
Support my work
I love writing and creating material for the blog. If you enjoy what you read and engage with I would be appreciative of any donation, large or small, to help me keep it advert and restriction free. Alternatively, feel free to buy me a coffee.
There's something about rusty rails winding through weeds and grass that stirs the soul for me James. Probably why I love the Carbis Wharf branch so much. Superb piece of modelling. It's interesting how parts of a model railway can grab you but the whole composition doesn't. I've often built something in a hurry simply so that I can build something, usually pressured by someone else who has expressed the opinion that not much is happening and yet I've got all this model railway stuff! Take care.
ReplyDeleteMorning Tom, thanks for the reflection. I thought blending the craft with the heart in this post was a way of explaining more about me as an artist. Perhaps also getting others to consider their own relationship with the world of model railways, be that procrastination or in action, or more ‘rushed’ like in this instance.
DeleteHi James
DeleteVery atmospheric of narrow gauge industrial railways . How you manage to do something so good and so quickly is an inspiration. Perhaps you could model it as a sugar beet loading area . Somewhere for that Trabant? Might need another point however. Coach could be for workers and some of the bid sugar mills used those LyD locos
It could also double as a French sugar beet tramway
Have a good week
Best regards
Alan
Thanks Alan, food for thought.
Delete"Somewhere for that Trabant?"
DeleteIn Poland? No way. Much more typical for Poland in those days was Maluch, i.e. Fiat 126p (p meaning a Polish license of Fiat 126, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126). Maluch = baby, toddler. Therte were made 3,3 million Maluchs in Poland between 1973 and 2000.
Sadly there isn't much in the way of suitable cars to choose from in 1/76 - I made the crazy decision to model in the larger scale (over 1/87) many years ago to allow me to run the models alongside by British narrow gauge - and appreciate their much larger size! Oxford do a Beetle and a VW bay van, but otherwise...
DeleteWell, might you try 1:72? This one?
Deletehttps://sklep.gpm.pl/3d-druk/3d-modele/1/72-3d/fiat-126p-maluch-full-interior-1/72-3d-druk
I tried to learn Polish, the company I work for hired a teacher and we had monthly lessons. 10 started out, and at the end only three remained (including me) before the effort was abandoned. Polish is bloody hard!
ReplyDeleteMy first language is Czech, for most foreigners probably as hard as Polish or Slovak. Anyway, we Czechs, Slovaks and Poles understand each other quite well. Our languages are as similar as, say, English, Frisian and Dutch.
Delete"Mchowisko (Mmm-cho-vis-ko I think...)"
It depends how you pronounce "ch". If you pronounce it like in "change", it is not correct. More exact might be something like "kh", but at this moment I cannot recall any English word containing this guttural sound...
Paul - that is some commitment. I've been learning Welsh for nearly two years but still a long way from being confident to speak it - although I'm not too bad at signs and menus - and learning all the time.
DeleteHank - you might be right, that coarse kh sound is not one we have much use for in the English language.
Hi James I do like what you have done in 009 gauge. The track work and static grass looks great. I do really like the look of that loco.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kevin!
DeleteSomething very fitting about the second image. It takes the mind to far off lonely and forgotten places.
ReplyDeleteThank you Joe - good to hear from you. That is very much the right sort of sense of place.
DeleteFile 'Polish Narrow Gauge' under the heading of railway subjects I didn't know appealed to me'.
ReplyDeleteVery nice! Like JoeM5217, I very much appreciate the stark, almost bleak setting. There's beauty in it.
Haha sorry, but glad to open a new rabbit hole for you!
Delete"...the stark, almost bleak setting..."
DeleteExactly! That reminds me of the Polish region called Kujawy at the season of the sugar beet harvest, i. e. October to December: Endless flat plains, huge beet piles by narrow gauge sidings, solitary yellowing or leafless trees and everywhere around you ubiquitous dense fog, out of which emerges a narrow-gauge engine with several rickety beet wagons.
How about trying to model the fog with visibility of up to 50 metres...?
(Hmmm... that was an attempt to make a joke...)
I forgot to say: Everything mentioned above is set in the period of 1950s to 1980s.
DeleteHank, thanks you, this, how you describe, is just how I imagined it. A friend does have a smoke machine…
Delete