Volunteer Help

 If you volunteer to help, BE A HELP! Do not be part of the problem. It is far better to say “No” than it is to show up and not help. Where I work I get all kinds of skill levels when we call the Union Hall for a bunch of carpenters. I will not fire you if you do not know how to do something, there is ALL kinds of work to do, I can use you. 

-BUT-

Do not tell me you can do something when you can’t. Don’t fight with my other carpenters of the security people. If you can’t get from the parking lot to the job site without fighting with the security guards, go home.

What I mean is, show up to HELP. Hopefully I am organized enough to have enough materials together so when you show up, you are making trees with-in minutes of sitting down. Do you know what I mean?

Technical help is another matter all together. I am very particular about the technical help I get. I do not want something that I do not KNOW, I mean REALLY KNOW how to fix fast in case it fails during a session. So because of that a lot of features that otherwise might enhance the layout’s visual experience, do not get installed. One guy came by to fix my telephone system, pulling out ALL the existing wiring, “It has to come out before it can go back in”, well that was about 2012, I’m still waiting for that guy to return (So I can punch him in the nose!).  

Up until recently I was a Southern California modeler, now I am in Virginia and I will have to see what I can expect from local modelers vis-a-vie volunteer help. I hope to get help building structures. I certainly want help making trees, on AIR 1, I had about 30 linear feet of layout forested, only 570’ to go! I want more of the layout forested. I’m pretty good at wiring the track, as well as the track installation itself. Benchwork, I can do that faster with out help. Ideas, that’s what I need.

When you make helpful comments try to literally make them HELPFUL. “You need a cross-over in this location” is much better than, “Why don’t you model the Union Pacific?”. After my last layout tour, and I do me that that open house will be the very last I ever host, I got an emphatic comment, “You need more trees”. So at open houses try, I mean REALLY TRY, to keep any comments upbeat and complementary, or DO NOT MAKE ANY AT ALL.

I will keep you posted.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wingedfoot Paper Part 2: Pulpwood

 On AIR1 a large, centrally located industry, was Wingedfoot Paper. As Jon Cure is fond of saying, a paper mill is the perfect Model Railroad industry. The major raw material is wood pulp. In 1952  pulpwood, cut and stacked like cord wood, was shipped to mills in a variety of cars. Nearly any car you can name was used, or modified in such a way as to become, a pulpwood hauler. Generally pulpwood was not valuable enough to travel far. The collection of pulpwood racks I have,  needs a great deal of repainting and re-lettering.  I just don’t think it’s likely to see Atlantic Coast Line cars hauling pulpwood into central WV! I have been toying with the idea of repainting cars from distant foreign roads and just adding a simplified lettering, using the premise that they are not for interchange. We’ll see. [4/19/22 this afternoon I went through the box of pulpwood cars. I think with only a few exceptions I’m going to have to repaint these flats and letter them for the AIR....
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL and Freight Houses

 LCL is a huge source of revenue, car loading, and tonnage for railroads of the steam era. By the end of WWII numbers dropped fast, mainly due to trucks and roads. But to be honest LCL continued to be a big part of railroading. Today all that UPS traffic is LCL. There has been a lot of discussion of late about how to implement LCL  on a model railroad. My feeling is I do not want to perform a function by simply standing and counting off the seconds, pretending to off load LCL packages. What I did on AIR1 was to print up Waybills that simulated packages of LCL.  The peddler car was placed in the consist of a local, the car card for the peddler car had multiple bills in it, and as the local got to each depot, the train crew would check their LCL bills to check for a set out. You did not set out the car, you set out the BILL.  I extended this procedure for REA packages, US Mail, passengers, and now I plan to add this function for loaded milk cans, but more on all that l...
Read more

Freight House Operations: LCL from Foreign Road Freight Houses

 On AIR 1 while WM , N&W, CRR, and VGN trains had trackage rights over some or all of the layout, there were no freight houses for these foreign roads. Often in towns served by two or more competing lines one will find a freight house for each of these roads. In Winchester, VA the freight houses for the PRR and the B&O still stand today. On AIR 2 I do not plan model the extensive trackage rights as on the first layout. I plan to have these foreign roads to come on to the layout via either a short run of their track, visibly modeled, terminating at an interchange point, or simply a transfer from an off layout staging yard. In short fairly limited presence. However at each of these interchange points there should be some foreign road structures in their colors to give strong visual clues that these tracks do indeed belong to someone else. In a few cases, WM and N&W  for sure, some of these foreign road structures will be a freight house. Again, relying on the Kalmbac...
Read more