Data Packs

Hi Guy's,

I would just like to share with you something that I have been doing for a while now which can be a great help, when it comes to modelling. When I was living up at Ballina just over 10 years ago, I became involved with the Northern Rivers Fussy Modellers Group. This was a bunch of really good modellers that lived around the Northern Rivers Area. It wasn't a club as such, the guys would usually get together on a Friday night at each others place and model and consume Alcohol. The guy's would travel to exhibitions together and plan field trips, say to say Dorrigo to measure up some wagons and take photo's.

One thing that they taught me was the value of making up Data Packs. Now I guess a Data Pack can be what ever you want it to be. In their case they had made up packs for pacific wagons that they wanted to model. The general idea was to get as much info possible about that phototype. It would start with what Information can be gathered. This is usually an Article from the AMRM or can be the instructions from an available model kit. Any drawings of the wagon are added and then a series of photographs of the wagon including detail shots. I use the Plastic Portfolio's that you can buy from any newsagent to make up mine and photocopy any info that I need and glue in photographs as required. I was very lucky that the guys let me copy much of the stuff that they had. This is probably the reason that I model NSW now and not US prototype as I was at the time.

This is from my pack on the ELX group of wagons. The left side I think is a copy from the AMRM and the right is a plan drawing. Not sure where I got that from but it is handy.

 

This is another page from the same pack. Some photographs and more from the AMRM

 

This is from my VLX pack. These are BGB instruction sheets

 

As I get further into the pack, I try to add as much portrait shots of the wagons as I can. I find this most useful when it comes to painting and weathering. Some of my data packs only consist of photo's as this is all I have needed or could find when I was making it up.

This is from my NLDF pack. These are actually some of my photographs taken at Manildra.

 

After all the portrait shots I would then add as many detail shots that I can find. This is the detail shots from my NGGF file. I hoped to one day to super detail a number of Silvermaz NGGF's but Auscision Models beat me to it. This file will now only be used for the weathering of these wagons.

 

This is the start of my first Locomotive Date Pack. I now have an OTM's 82 class that I want to weather and add more detail to make it my own. It was about 10 years ago that made up most of my data packs. Back then I had to rely on whatever publications that I had and any photo's that I could get. Today with the internet, what a great tool this can be. With all the social groups that you can join on say Face Book for example, sometimes all you have to do is ask a question and you can get all the information that you need. I asked about 82 detail shots and 24 hours later a number of the members had private emailed me a number of detail shots. How good is that.

 

Anyway a data pack can be anything that you want it to be. I like a hard copy as they say so I can sit it beside me while modelling. I could just have it sitting in the computer as well. They come in very handy to me as the information is all there in one place. Anyway I hope this is of interest.

 

Next the shots of the 82 class model

 

Cheers Justin Moy