Rail Zombie, and other tales.

Traaains…

All rail zombies wear anoraks and have a notebook full of engine numbers. Somewhere I have a book of coach numbers. My ambition was, and remains, to get a book of coal truck numbers and go rust spotting.

I’m working on my tax form. If it’s not done this weekend I have to pay tax on account by the 30th (that’s advance tax based on the previous year’s income). If it is done in time, I get tax repaid because I was way under the tax limit last year. Oh I’d eventually get it all back even if I did end up paying but why loan them anything? They’ll just waste it.

Working on taxes means the procrastination dial is turned up to 11. I will do absolutely anything other than work on tax. I have a Dutch version of ‘The Goddess of Protruding Ears’ by Justin Sanebridge in the works. The English version is already published. I have a G scale railway stacked in the office (traaaaains) and I need to arrange the garden to fit the railway. Fortunately the shit weather is keeping me indoors so I’m restricted to indoor procrastination. There’s still plenty of that.

I’ve been watching the Donnie Trumpton chess game. Not really a fair game because his opponents don’t know it’s a chess game. They think he is stupid (well they think we are all stupid) even though he was born to an immigrant who worked as a maid and became a billionaire and then President. He survived a few doses of bankruptcy and came back. Stupid? Really?

He’s an arrogant arse. You could argue that a man who came from nothing to billions more than once is entitled to be a bit smug but in Balmedie, not too far from here, his golf course for the rich and insufferable has really pissed off the residents. He’s not popular in this part of Scotland.

Still, he plays a good game. He anticipates his (entirely predictable really) opponents and if this was a real chess game he’s ten moves ahead. The latest move, the Melania coat, was a beauty. A woman who can afford, and who is used to, high fashion, wears a grungy Parka with graffiti and nobody sees the clear chess move that entails. They fell for it, hook line and sinker. They fired up exactly as they were intended to.

I didn’t know that the separation of families at the border started with Clinton and continued unopposed through Bush and Obama. I didn’t know it was happening at all. Now I do. And now I, and all those Americans who aren’t frothing at the mouth, know it has been happening for a very long time and they know that Trumpy stopped it. He could have quietly stopped it. Instead he let it fester and rage and make headlines for the first time in about 20 years and then he stopped it.

He’s good. I don’t like him, but I have to admit he is good at this game.

Mrs Clinton, Mrs Bush and Mrs Obama never visited those separated kids. They weren’t supposed to be noticed. Oh but Mrs Trump went to visit. Dressed in homeless chic, off she went. There was Outrage!

I laughed like a hyena on acid when I saw that coat. You could not make a more obvious move unless you tried for a fool’s mate on Kasparov. Melania Trump dressed like a 60’s mod? Come on, if they had put her on a moped with fifty rear view mirrors it could not have been more obvious.

The left responded with all they have. Stormy Daniels. They sent a porn star to visit the children. A porn star.  Yeah, because all those kids have watched her on Kid TV and all aspire to be like her. Jesus, you could not put up a worse opponent to Melania Trump in a flasher coat.

I reckon I’m pretty good at anticipating an enemy move. I one brought a co-worker close to tears of laughter in a meeting when I brought out the answer to every criticism ‘someone’ tried to tag me with. I saw it all coming.

I wouldn’t take on Trump though. And I would never play chess with him for money. I might not like the guy personally but I have to admire his game. He’s very good at it.

But back to serious stuff. Traaains!

I have been populating the coaches for this new set. G scale is 1:22.5 but I can get away with 1:24 and 1:25 too. The difference is minimal. And the size of this stuff means you can have people in seats without cutting feet off.

Here is the coach. The ruler beside it is 2 feet (60 cm) for scale. I have four. Coaches,not rulers!

The people are in various levels of moulding detail. It doesn’t matter too much, they will be inside a coach and not very visible so I won’t go overboard on the details. Pretty rough is good enough in this case.

First example – Train Perv 1

Bit low on detail. Compare with Train Perv 2 –

Just as vile but with better definition.

Again, Man with a Can, crap moulding…

…as opposed to Creepy OIdman

Then again, we do have Random Tart 1…

And Random Tart 2…

… to keep the train pervs pervy.

You might have noticed Random Tart 3 progressing on Twitter. I have something special in mind for that one and for Random Tart 4. Later…

In other news, we have Guardian of the Bags –

The Pizza Addict

Mum Does Not Approve-

The Fat Skinhead

And of course, Nigel Farage –

There are others but that will do for now. There’s a really filthy Batman diorama in progress too.

If I could only force myself to finish this tax form.