HN2009 National Convention

I also want to mention that I will be at the NMRA National Convention next week up in Hartford, CT. I will be giving a couple of clinics, but mainly I plan to enjoy all that the convention has to offer. I plan to post daily entries to this blog, so check back during the week to see what is going on up in Hartford.

Unbuilt Kits Stash takes a hit

The next big project up for the layout will be removing the temporary benchwork along the far wall to put in the permanent benchwork, track and staging yards. I have a plan in mind now for that area and I am ready to start building it. But right now was not the best time to dive into this work, for a few reasons. So I found I had some time and needed some model railroading projects to work on.

Recently I went through my entire freight car and locomotive collection and looked for items I do not plan to use to donate to the NJ Division raffle at our Meets. In doing so I also took a look at my stash of unbuilt freight car kits, weeded out the donations, and with the remaining I decided to go on a building spree to get some of these things built. It was basically a no cost activity. I already bought these kits and they are just waiting to get onto the layout. Here is a picture of the stack before I started:



Over the course of about 2 weeks I finished about a dozen of these cars and got them onto the layout. I also had to get the airbrush out for a customer's project so I took advantage of that to also weather these cars. Now I really need to get the rest of the layout built as St. Johnsbury is not big enough to hold all these cars now! Here is a few of them, from Athearn, Intermountain, Branchline, Red Caboose, even an old McKean kit for TOFC flatcars and a Robins Rails kit:




So if you are looking for something to do, but reluctant to spend some money right now, be sure to look over your unbuilt kit stash. Assembling some of these is fun and not too taxing on the skill set, so it makes a nice summertime modeling activity.