A clutch of 03s?

It all started with 03382 as the catalyst for the first Gerald Road. The lure of the smallest Farish diesel shunter, fuelled I’m sure by the childhood memories of Dad’s Mainline OO gauge example and how I used to just go and open the box and stare at it sometimes - somehow its perfect form felt unobtainable, unachievable to me and my Lima models…

Now 03382 left with the second Gerald Road - and as did 03162 later - yet they’re still multiplying here. It’s a lovely model, a classic miniature where the spirit has been captured yet the overscale rods and coarse wheels only add to the excitement, reminding the child inside of me just how small these are…

For that must be part of it right? 

Small things are exciting! 

But what else fuels this fascination. Memory is a cruel mistress - offering both sanctuary and longing, the first fleeting the second less so - and so nostalgic becomes tinged with sadness. I can’t relive those experiences of gently opening the black and yellow box, sliding out the polystyrene tray (anyone else remember the noise that made) and gently lifting the Chinese made model out of its parental bound prison. Dad never ran his models… when I remember them it isn’t wholly positive.

So instead I make these examples my own. 

They’re not memories, their creations.

Cut-down compared - BP&G left more involved whereas the IoW, right, just chopped the top of the cab off.

Un-faded vs faded BR blue, BP&G chop vs standard.

IoW chop vs standard.

Whilst the cut down BP&G models were quite involved the other three were more relaxed and mindful modelling. Inspired by specific prototypes, found photos on Flickr or perhaps a YouTube video - or even better that childhood train spotting book photograph… an energy that many of you I’m sure can relate to, and enough fuel to fan the spark of creativity into a flame.

Each modelmaking step is a mindful opportunity. Gently stripping the model to its components, running in and honing the performance of the chassis, carefully popping handrails and glazing out of the shell, cleaning the paint off after a bath in IPA… all familiar processes carried out almost without thought. Practice, keeping the hands busy and letting thoughts come and go, focused really on just two things, the task and the end result.

So that each of these models represents not just the prototype, but holds a little bit of me (as your models do of you) and a memory of the calming meditative process that created them. So they become markers, flags in the ground, holding them once more can give a fragment of that feeling in a hard day. They can raise a knowing, private smile - and move me, you, past a difficult or challenging moment.

It is like they hold part of what created them, a little piece of magic.

That is only amplified if we have a chance to let them move, to roll over our familiar rails, those ribbons… a clutch of moments, not just models. Until next time, more soon…

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