After the grim reaper.

Well, yesterdays news got me thinking a bit, plus the local support group meeting last night.

First up, the group meeting was well supported last night. Some interesting discussions as always (though the exact price for a G numberplate was not discussed; please don't post it in the comments section as the gentleman in questions wife doesn't know...). I took along the curvy bit of track, and discussed my problems with converting a technique from one scale into another. I also had a discussion on electromagnetic coils which could bear some fruit over the weekend on the uncoupling front.. And did you know that 30 'G' class Garratt kits sold?
(I now know the sort of person who would buy one too)

Yesterday was also a good 'community outreach to the elderly'. You know, going round to the house, a couple of cups of tea and a chat, and installing a few Tortoise switch machines. We got a fair bit of work done and it will be good to see it running once the control panel is made. I've also come up with a good idea for point motors that could be quite cheap, but I'll have to do a bit more work on it to see how it will work.

Back to the first point now. At the meeting I announced Grahams passing, and this then lead to the story of another well known modeler who had been asked to help out catalog a collection for a 'soon to be deceased' fellow modeler. Now this doesn't sound like a fun task after the fact, so it must be even less fun for all parties before. The only bright point is that the person who knows just what the hell all the bits are is still there to describe it. The main pitfall of the process has been the wife's discovery of just how much has been spent on the 'drip feed'.
Now, how may others out there have any sort of plan involving our 'assets' when we shuffle off this mortal coil. I know I haven't. (And I probably should, given that I work with a stack of noxious chemicals all day and have a family history of heart disease and cancer. The only way I could possibly make it worse would be to run around on hilltops during thunderstorms yelling ' All gods are bastards'). So when I pass on the lady of the house will be left with a room full of crap to deal with, and there really is a vast amount of stuff ( there's at least 4-5 divisions worth of WW2-modern wargaming stuff, plus all the ancient armies, and then the 'odds and sods'). All of it isn't even cataloged for insurance.

And I guess this all leads back to Graham. No one in this country has had such a wide influence on the hobby. He created from scratch a range of world class wheels (Australia doesn't have anything like it)and expanded over time to include so much more modeling bits and bobs. There will be very few of us who have not purchased or used a North yard product, from a catalog which ran to 10 pages of everything a modeler could need on the engineering side. Almost all the S scale wagons and locos in the country run on his wheel sets. Indeed it was only last week that I was discussing with him the private production of 54" driver tyres for NZ120. He is going to be sorely missed, and to be brutally honest its left a huge hole to fill ( I'm not proud of it, but its what most of us will be thinking)