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When I was seven years old, we lived in a small town in Montana close to the Canadian border. My dad worked in the town sawmill and didn't make much money. We rented a brown wood house for $35 a month and mom says that that was a lot of money for us at that time. There was a second bedroom (actually the master bedroom) that we used for a storage area and in there my dad had a table and a shelf where he built and displayed the many plastic models he built. His favorites were 1/25 cars, 1/72 and 1/48 WW2 aircraft, sailing ships, and Aurora figures. Occasionally, he built a balsa wood airplane. I am not sure how I started building, but I remember building 1/25 scale autos. Back then the 2-in-1 kit was popular where you could build the car as stock, or a customized show car. Mine were not painted just assembled. My cousin acquired the 1/25 Silhouette car model and I recall thinking that it had a lot of small fragile parts. The Revell car kits always had scale parts but the JoHan, AMT, and others had a solid underframe and steel rod for axles. This was the time that one could order models from cereal boxes. I recall a 1/25 Rambler that was cast in red plastic and had a rubberband drive. My dad had two large powered kits, one was the Flintmobile and another was an aircraft carrier. I can't remember what happened with the Flintmobile as I don't remember it ever being built. The aircraft carrier was electric powered and had interchangable cams that would cause it to cruise in various patterns. Tiny F8's fit onto a rubber band catapault and they could be shot across the room. My dad never finished this kit and I finally did sometime around 1979. In late 1960 we moved to Utah and I continued building 1/25 cars and then ventured into WW2 aircraft, mostly in 1/48 scale. Now I was painting them and putting on decals. My car building sort of went wild as I cross-kitted and attempted numerous customizations. I took a 1967 Dodge Charger, cut off the roof and was trying to figure out how to glue fabric on the seats. Another experiment was making mud out of brown glossy paint and sugar--it didn't look much like mud. Once in a while I built a balsa airplane kit. I started into HO slot cars sometime during Junior High. One of my friend also had some of these and I would go over there and take some of my cars with me. During one of these visits was the first time I ever listened to a Dean Martin album. I loved to paint the bodies and I took a Lincoln Continental and made it into the Black Beauty. Another favorite of mine was a blue Aurora 1940 Willy's to which I applied four star decals and I called it The Four Star Challenge. I continued with HO slot cars up until 1974. My dad and I had taken the family car in for repairs and I was reading a slotcar magazine and telling him something about what I was reading and he said, "Why don't you get interested in trains?" Something happened that day--I became interested in trains. My dad bought several boxes of old HO trains at a flea market and I managed to get several of them running. Track was set up on a sheet of plywood. From there, I began reading my new favorite magazine Railroad Modeler and I found a lot of inspiration for scratchbuilding from its pages. My favorite articles were those by Ron Targany concerning his Gila Pacific. I wanted to build some of his projects but I did not know how to start. In 1978 my dad passed away. He had been scratchbuilding steam engines in 1/2" scale. These were non powered static models made from cardboard and whatever else he could find. He sold several to a hobby store in Ogden Utah and when the store caught fire in 1990 they burned. I became interested in 19th century O standard gauge trains and I bought an O scale wood flatcar kit for a whopping $16 only to find that all it contained was several pieces of non-scale wood. I was so disappointed and upset that the kit was so poorly designed and cost so much. This led me into scratchbuilding and several O standard gauge cars were completed.; made with help of the Kalmbach book Easy-to-Build Model Railroad Cars. By 1980 I needed money to buy tools for college so I sold off the model trains, the biggest lot being HO ready-to-run items that my dad and I collected. 1983 I was married and we moved to Texas to go to college. I was now dabbling in On3 and completed an R/C sailing boat. By 1985 I had sold off the On3 items and was back building O standard gauge. It was here that I found satisfaction. I didn't have money to spend on materials so I used fiberboard and cardboard, tooth picks, floral wire, and precious bits of strip wood, Athearn O trucks and Kadee O couplers. Decals were out of the question so I used dry transfer lettering. I found that I liked building this way because the cars were built to my personality and were unique. After college my wife and I moved to Denver and I did a bit of work in N scale but missed scratchbuilding rolling stock so in 1990 I took up On30. In the next 16 years, I published an On30 newsletter, self published two books of rolling stock drawings with the help of my friend John Wolf, and wrote a column for Light Iron Digest called On the 30" Gauge. In 2005 I began work on an On30 primer. In the middle of the year we moved to Illinois and I finally completed the manuscript in October 2006. 2007 was spent developing my style of 1/32 ~ 1/29 scale trains. I call my models "i-Trains" as they run on 45mm track but are scaled between 1/32 (I scale) and 1/29. This is an attempt to return to the style of model building I was doing in O scale in the mid 1980's. The only reason for i-Trains is that I want a few steam engines and they are cheaper in the G Gauge world than they are in the O standard gauge 2-rail world. I have also dabbled in other creative pursuits: radio controlled aircraft, balsa wood rubber powered planes, radio control wood boats, model rockets, oil painting, guitar playing, songwriting, fiction writing, and photography. Currently I've built and host three websites for charity organizations and one for an On30 manufacturer. Model railroaders who have inspired me are Ron Targany with his articles on the Gila Pacific and Eric Brooman with his articles on the Utah Belt. |
