Three flats is enough

Ellen Hood played flute in high school band across from me and my clarinet.  Apparently, I was poorer than most kids at hiding my hobby as she found out about it, and introduced me to her dad, Tom.  For several years afterward, I joined Tom’s work sessions on Tuesday evenings, I guess until I moved to Vancouver.

Through all those years, a board with a half-dozen half-finished box cars collected dust in a corner of the benchwork.  When I asked Tom about them, he said that six was just too many.   You have to drill every hole six times, and that feels more like a job than a hobby.  Three was his limit, and so, his boxcar project languished.

Now, hats off to folks like Chester Mackniewski with his mega-projects, or JD over at 78 Miles to Yosemite, who is working on 38 freight cars at once!  Chapeau to my old friend (and Tom’s), Bill Scobie, who once assembled 16 P-B-L high side gondolas in a week.

But for me, as I was realigning twelve brake beams on swing-motion double archbar trucks from Shapeways, I thought back to Tom.  He was right: three models at once is enough.