I find it nearly impossible to write about myself. What to say? Do I describe what I do for a living? I’m an architect. Do I describe what I want to be? An artist. What am I going to do about this? I don’t know.
I’ve always loved trains, but I didn’t know this until after I moved to NYC. It seems there is a dearth of trains in the USA these days. Old folks who love trains abound. They have endless stories of the glory days and riding some train to visit Auntie whoever. But young folks today in America grow up without any trains to ride at all. Thus they lack interest in trains. I remember my parents taking us kids to places where we rode special tourist type trains; I always enjoyed these immensely. Dad did too. And we rode Amtrak once. I can understand nobody getting excited about trains from riding Amtrak. But the tourist type trains were always fun - but they weren’t a useful everyday thing. And of course, every American youngster has been warned about the horror of the NYC subway - don’t look anybody in the eye; they’ll eat you! So, alas, young Americans don’t love trains.
Europeans, however, have passenger trains. And good service, too. And useful everyday routes. I rode the trains around continental Europe back in 2000 - I think I spent half my three week vacation on the trains just riding. Enjoying watching the scenery out the window. I adored the tram in Bern, Switzerland. And I adored Swiss trains in general - so cute! And the Swiss trains run on time - like clockwork. I mostly rode the SBB operated trains. But I also rode a few others, one of which was the train from Martigny to Chamonix. It was a cute two-car affair that ran up into the Alps. I was smitten! After the trip, I just sort of curled back up under my rock and let it go. After a few years, I moved to NYC to attend grad school, and sort of rediscovered trains - namely in the form of the NYC subway.
Modeling trains seems to be a good way to explore my love of trains and enjoy them. If nothing else, it keeps me out of trouble - safely tucked away at home working on my models. My sister had a model train for awhile. She bought a little European train set while she was visiting Germany back when we were kids still in high school. Dad, being an electrical engineer, made a transformer to enable her train to run at home in America. And we set up the oval track and watched the train go round and round. Even the cat enjoyed it - liked to watch and periodically pounce on th engine. Eventually the locomotive got gunked up with carpet fuzz and the train got put away. I’ve never seen the thing since, but I’m sure my sister still has it. It was sort of a treasure for her.
As an adult, after my trip to Europe, I wanted a model train again. I bought a little HO scale set - some American freight train - but watching it run around on its oval track just didn’t do anything for me. Somehow just buying a bunch of track and train cars and snapping it together wasn’t the right answer. But for a long time, I didn’t know what the answer was. So I let it go. When I landed my current job nearly two years ago, my boss detected my love of trains - ok, it’s not hard to notice - and let me borrow a book to read. The book was about John Allen and his model trains. I learned a lot reading that book - John Allen scratch-built everything! That was it! That was the answer! John Allen had no excuse, there simply wasn’t plastic ready-to-run models available back then. And during the war, there wasn’t anything but raw materials and scraps to work with. So, I decided that I would scratch-build a model train - the entire thing - track, scenery, rolling stock, and locomotives.
My first decision as a model-railroader (and artist) was to decide what to model. John Allen worked from prototypes but he also added a lot of imagination. His train “Gorre and Daphetid” was a made-up railroad, but it had roots in reality. This was sort of what I had originally thought I would do, but upon actual attempts to make something, I found that it would be easier for starters to model a real train. So, I did some research online and selected the Rhätische Bahn in Graubünden, Switzerland. I figure, years from now, when I know everything and have super-awesome skills at this, I’ll make up an imaginary railroad.
I started modeling trains in May 2005. At first, I did simple boxes and quick boxcars. I got some books and did lots of reading about model trains. But I also became an artist. Rather than follow the recipe-like instructions about how to make this or model that, I started playing with materials and paint and colors, and started doing things with the eye of an artist. Now this has gotten completely out of hand, and I have all kinds of paint, palette knives, and brushes. And about half my wardrobe at least one paint blob on it. Somehow, picking out the right shade of red-brown paint for a boxcar morphed into spending hours mixing red, yellow, and blue paint to make the right shade.
Maybe that explains who I am or maybe it just raises more questions or maybe it misses the point entirely. Essentially this blog is here to allow me to share my model train making.
Contact: gmpicket at studiopickett dot com