Last weekend (Victoria Day weekend) was the Canadian Association of Railway Modellers’ (www.caorm.org) annual national convention. This year, Victoria played host on the University of Victoria campus. For a Canuck like me, and especially as a BCer, there was a lot to choose from in the program. I attended some excellent workshops on topics such as the Dolly Varden Mines Railway (an old fave), mining in the Boundary District of BC, Mines in general, PGE modelling and scratchbuilding locomotives in brass. Overall, there was more going on than anyone could hope to take in; thank goodness I registered so late, all the tours were sold out.
I delivered two clinics: one on scratchbuilding and another on Proto:87. Each was attended by about 30 people. I had the most fun with the scratchbuilding clinic, which covered much of the material from my mini-series of articles in Railroad Model Craftsman (RMC). For this clinic, I prepared some basic powerpoint, but spent the bulk of the time demonstrating through a live video feed. It’s alway fun to see people start to understand my techniques, which revolve mostly around getting value out of each measurement you make.
The P87 clinic was about recent advances in Proto:87, and covered many of Andy Reichert’s excellent products (see www.proto87.com). This clinic was more straightforward, being mostly powerpoint and questions. How did we ever do clinics before Powerpoint?
For the show, I managed to do quite a bit of work on the caboose. Sadly, my camera is eating batteries too quickly these days, and so, for the sake of the environment, I have no pictures. Suffice it to say that the body is all but complete, as are the end railings. I had rushed the cupola so I could show it at my clinic, but I made a bit of a bodge of it, so I re-did it. Now it looks pretty good, or at least sufficiently good for me. I’m about to install the windows, then I’m down to detailing out the underframe and painting.
I’m working on buying a digital SLR with the proceeds from my articles in RMC, and once that’s in play, I’ll get some more pics up to share with you. I wonder how many of you there are, anyway?
Proto87.org 