Huw Griffiths Posted October 28, 2012 Share Posted October 28, 2012 Hello there! As I haven't noticed an "official" intro thread here, I hope nobody minds if create my own, unofficial, one. If nothing else, this might offer some way of confirming that I'm not a "bot". My name is Huw Griffiths - and I'm a 47 year old instrumentation engineer, from SE Wales, UK. I suspect that my modelmaking background might be rather different to many people's here - so I don't wish to bore everyone with loads of irrelevant detail. Essentially, my main interest is railways - real and model - standard and narrow gauge - but especially tramcars, railbuses and small locomotives (the sort that many US modellers refer to as "critters"). This might have some people wondering why I'd even be looking at a site about model cars - relax, there is madness in my method (or should that be the other way round?). In fact, a number of railbuses have actually borne a striking resemblance to road vehicles - at one time, a number of railways even fitted rail wheels to Ford Model T (or similar) road vehicles and used them to run services on branchlines. In the 1930's a German company came up with a slightly more developed version of this idea - the Wismar railbus - essentially 2 Ford A's, fitted at either end of a bespoke chassis, with a passenger saloon between them. A number of railways have used other road-to-rail conversions in revenue service over the years - "Galloping Geese" on the Rio Grande Southern - Borgward trucks fitted with rail wheels and used to haul passenger trailers on the Isle of Sylt - probably loads of others. More recently, a number of railways have fitted rail wheels to more modern designs of road vehicles - and used them for track inspection - I'm aware of LandRovers and Unimogs being used in this way, but I'm sure other designs have been used. The common ground between rail and road vehicle modelling actually goes beyond adapting kits. Most of the skills involved are exactly the same - and this is why I've started checking out about model cars. Essentially, I'm here to learn skills which I might be able to apply to another area of modelmaking. I'm already learning from "Dr. Cranky's" recent book "Ratz, Rodz & Rust" - and also the YT videos. I'm also learning from all the amazing builds (and other stuff) in this site's "workbench" section - I particularly like Shawn Shirley's scratchbuild of a 1983 Ford Falcon: http://www.modelcars...showtopic=53895. Right now, I don't have a lot that I can usefully add here - partly because most of my modelmaking tends to be expendable "proof of concept" stuff (which often doesn't look much like anything) - partly because I don't have a photo hosting account (probably not much point). For this reason, I'm likely to be rather quiet around here for a while. However, this might change in the future - if I get chance to do some real modelmaking - or if I'm aware of sensible answers to questions posed on this site - but, until then, you probably won't hear too much from me. All the best to everyone on this site. Regards, Huw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scuderia Posted October 28, 2012 Share Posted October 28, 2012 thanks for the intro and welcome, lots of good info here. Hope to see your work soon. cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rel14 Posted October 28, 2012 Share Posted October 28, 2012 Welcome to th e site, you'll find lots of advice and help here,, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huw Griffiths Posted October 29, 2012 Author Share Posted October 29, 2012 Thanks, guys. I agree with the comments about this place being full of excellent info, advice and other help. It'll take me a while to go through all the useful stuff that's been posted on this site - and I'm looking forward to doing this - but, when I manage this, it'll probably take even longer for me to use all this stuff. Posting pictures of builds and other stuff will probably take me even longer - mainly for the reasons mentioned above - but also stuff like time, space, cost and of course external commitments. I'm not saying this to be awkward - or lazy - or anything else, for that matter. I'm just facing facts - I don't wish to make promises I don't know I can keep. All that stuff out of the way, I know this site is good - and I'm looking forward to being part of it even if, at first, I'm not as active as I might like to be. All the best. Regards, Huw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace-Garageguy Posted October 29, 2012 Share Posted October 29, 2012 Welcome welcome. I've learned a huge amount from railroad modelers over the years, and I'm constantly impressed by the fidelity to prototype practice, as well as the tremendous amount of quality scratch-building that's done. I'm sure there's a bunch of information here that will be useful to you...going in the other direction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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