Mirontaine Card Buildings

I've actually put quite a lot of labour into the model railway this past week - although it may not look like that.

That labour has been devoted entirely to the row of card buildings across from my model of the Gare du Nord.

These buildings were manufactured by the French company Mirontaine.

Unfortunately, whatever scale they were was much smaller than H0 scale and so I had to get the component sections of card enlarged by a professional graphics company.

A comparison of the original and the enlarged version.

A consequence of the enlargement was to render the model slightly unstable and floppy. This past week I set about reinforcing the structure of the buildings and also adding in some chimney breasts, also for strength.

A particularly floppy section.

Reinforced with a card insert at the top

and at the bottom.

The extra chimney breasts

Some of the original chimney breasts were painted on only one side so I picked up the brushes and coloured in the other side with acrylic paints.

The back of the model was only partially coloured in by Mirontaine and so I painted in some extensions to the roof sections.

And then photocopied a section of the wall from elsewhere in the model and stuck it over the unpainted expanse of white card.

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Currently listening to:

From my teenage years.

Monster Movie by Can

From the 90s but I'm only catching up on them now.

The Week Never Starts Around Here: by Arab Strap

From Falkirk, Arab Strap produced some really mean and moody music - make that GRITTY, MEAN and MOODY!!!!!

This week's mix played on almost a continuous loop.

Latin Excursion by Malcolm McKenzie

http://www.mixcloud.com/malcolm-mckenzie/latin-excursion/

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Just finished reading:

Wonderful and profound.

Currently reading:

Slimmed Down Blog

It had been my intention to reduce the frequency of this blog to once a week, say a Sunday, and focus more on the model railway aspect - starting today.

Unfortunately, this intention has coincided with a very busy weekend and so there's only time to include a few photographs.

I hope the photographs will demonstrate the rightness of my decision to introduce a raised section to the model railway diorama.

Hitherto, my thinking had conceived of the town surrounding the railway station as being all on the one level - a kind of 3D map. How unrealistic! No town is completely on the flat; and reflecting that undulation should increase the visual power of the model.

A modest raised section of about 1.5cm, achieved by sitting a row of card buildings across from the front of the station upon some plywood.

The card buildings themselves are still to be glued together.

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O Ye of Little Faith

The stained glass window in St Simon's RC Church in the West End of Glasgow depicting Simon Peter sinking beneath the waves as he tries to walk across the sea to reach Jesus.

Blog will resume Sunday 18th January 2015

For a variety of reasons I've decided to take a break from this blog for a fortnight or so.

Will resume 18th January 2015.

2015

Motto for 2015:

"Jesus I trust in You."


For me, there can be no other.

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Currently listening to:

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Last night's dinner:


Forgot to take photograph but it was excellent in all respects.



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Currently reading:

And:

I seem to have spent my whole life reading books with the word "Elementary" in the title.


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Drumming practice update:


And talking of "elementary", I've partially abandoned the incremental approach to drumming practice ie the approach whereby one waits until one has mastered a pattern at a slow tempo before trying the same pattern at a slightly quicker tempo and so on until one can perform it at pyrotechnical speeds.

Drumming skills seem to have dimensions other than the quantitative which interact with the quantitative.

The situation reminds me of the counting of varying numbers of objects in one's visual field.

When there are only a few spots, one doesn't seem to count them at all - one immediately perceives that there are three or immediately perceives that there are five spots.

But there comes a point when one has to count the spots one by one to find out how many are there.

Ignoring the factor of any pattern in which the spots might be arranged, there seems to be a discontinuity between on the one hand counting any number up to five or six spots  - which is done as an immediate perception - and, on the other hand, being faced with 7 or 8 or more spots where one has to resort to counting 1 by 1.

Likewise with tempo but in REVERSE!!!!!

Below a certain tempo one can perceive and monitor individual strokes and do so on a number of dimensions:

eg loudness, height of stick, degree of movement of wrist, height of arm movement, position of arm relative to torso, flight of stick through the air and so on.

Above a certain tempo one cannot perceive the movement of the stick in these atomic terms: one has to apprehend them as a group of stick movements; a pattern or Gestalt if you like.

The upshot of all this is that I have been practising at both slow tempos and high tempos.


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Miscellany:

Went for a long New Year's cycle this morning, in the pouring rain - fantastic.

Along the riverside and then back through the fairly empty streets of Glasgow city centre.

And then past this new and impressive temple that is rising up in the West End of the city.

Not sure which religion it celebrates.