I'm not sure how much interest there might be in such things, but at least some understanding of where I've been these last few days.
Paul has been here for this, and Mike and Alex have heard a couple tales anyway, but I've built a model railroad that is an operations platform and host a group who are interested in that little niche of the modelling world on a regular basis. We run by order and switchlist changing scenarios each time.
Anyway, last weekend saw the last session for a few months as I've taken the thing out of service to strip it back and get some scenery on the horizontal surfaces. A while ago, we did the vertical surfaces such as backscenes.
The last several days have been long workdays as each section gets the prepwork done; sealing the surface, painting trackage a deep brown colour in preparation for ballasting, doing up the fascias in front to which the ground covers get sealed, &c.
Model railways have been a vocation for almost as long as I've been out of the Regulars and in engineering (I've always had two going at the same time until I retired from the military and engineering professional thread). I pulled the pin on model railways as a profession some four years ago now, and it wasn't clear I would take it up again as a hobby.
I don't know how many people have said over the years, "It must be great to be able to do one's hobby as a profession." It isn't. A hobby is intended as a relief from one's job and the rigours of the day. If something becomes a professional endeavour, it can no longer be a pastime.
When I retired from my second stint editing one of the American modelling magazines, it wasn't at all a certainty I'd take this up as a pastime after so many years. I let everything sit for almost two years, it turned out, until one day I picked up some tools and started building something for fun.
Then things took off, and I've been enjoying this as a hobby for the first time in decades. While I'd built layouts as testbeds, models for articles, that had always been an adjunct to the vocation. Now, it's just for the pure fun of it (though Mike will say I'm far too neurotic about it. Grin!)
I have not gotten to the scenic stage of a model railroad since (it turns out) the late 1980s, the iterations during the career being mostly testbeds for layout design theory (designing trackplans for people being a large part of that vocation). Now, I am plunging into a bit of an unknown for me.
It's my usual mental approach. I'm a very linear thinker, getting focussed on one thing and neglecting everything else. My brain is happily churning away at this and my body is keeping up as best it can (lots of standing and stretching and the like). There probably is a bit of "do this while I'm still physically able" going on; I have to remind myself to keep to a break-taking schedule so as not to exceed the body's limits.
Still in all, its ground I have not tread in many years, lots to learn and try, and all without the pressures of deadline or delivery. At the same time, my mental makeup has me to focus on the project (to excess), so please pardon my occasional periods of absence.
Here is a dreadfully boring photo or three of one area now prepared (sealed, track painted, fascia applied) for the artistic part to begin.