Christmas approaches and this year we’ll be celebrating at my wife’s family farm. Down there they have a tradition that goes some way towards rejecting the crass commercialism that usually surrounds this holiday: every year you draw a single family member out of the hat and you’re expected to make a present for that person.
Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t because, like any family, there’s a couple of people that are difficult to make things for! Fortunately I drew my father-in-law this time and he’s an avid collector of Hornby Dublo tin-plate trains. I thought my hobby was expensive until I learned he’s quite happy to pay in the region of $400nzd+ for a single antique 1930’s tin-plate Hornby Dublo steam train in working condition.
He’s amassed quite a collection over the years and has started building an impressive layout in his wool shed. It’s just wired up track at the moment but it covers one entire 8′ x 6′ table and is he’s talking about building a second and bridging across to it. He’s also incredibly tolerant because he lets our four year old son play with his (expensive, rare, antique) collection as well. I live in fear of the day CJ breaks something…
Anyway, I’ve had a bunch of Linka molds in my garage for a while now as I was considering using them for Flames of War urban terrain. Unfortunately the 1/76th scale is sufficiently different from 1/100th (or 15mm) to make the doors and windows obviously out-sized.
However as Linka molds were originally created in the late 70’s explicitly for the Hornby Dublo scale I may as well use them as intended! So I intend to build and paint a set of three brick row houses for my father-in-law for this Christmas.
I’ve finished assembling the first this week (see photo) and have enough cast pieces, except windows for the other two. The Link molds cast well in Ultracal 30 and went together fairly easily with careful fitting and a little light sanding of some pieces.
The devil is going to be in the details, like gutters and downpipes, chimney stacks and glass windows as well as painting the buildings to a passable standard. However I always find a hard deadline tends to motivate one quite well!