Here's my random post of the year.
First a little bit of background: I'm a nerd. "Well, duh. You may say." But wait! Let us take a walking tour of the lands in my nerd-dom! Oh wait, here's a train, let's hop on that instead. First, on your right, there is the land of "World War history" - This land is littered with relics from 1914 to 1918 and 1939 to the mid 1940's. This land overlaps with the land of Trains on your left. The inhabitants of this land wander to and from WWH land making regular stops at stations throughout the two lands (Aside: My "in progress" basement HO layout is titled: SWE - Support the War Effort, a Canadian National railway line that supplies Halifax harbour).
Now, we come to the final major land in this nerd-dom where I reign supreme (with budgetary over site from she-who-reigns-more-supreme-than-I-no-matter-what-I-think-so-there). Currently there is a large impenetrable wall separating this land from the other two - it is the end of the line. On the other side of the wall it is known as Scifi land. This land is so advanced that technology seems like magic and sometimes actually is. It contains large dog-like walking machines containing white armoured people who all look the same, people who trek through the stars and even on occasion, hammers for war in the far, far, far future (40 something or other). Not to mention, an occasional blue box that seems to appear and disappear, and so on and so forth.
Recently, the impenetrable wall cracked through and I've been thinking (a very dangerous activity for me), "Hey! Why can't the inhabitants of Trains be trained (ouch, sorry) to travel through this fortuitous breach in the previously-thought-to-be-impenetrable wall?" Thus, I donned my robes and unleashed the power of google-fu... To, surprisingly, limited success. To summarize: A Warhammer 40K O-scale train, a most cool RMRS OO (again WH40K) and an article from the 1970s showing how to create and model a moon train. Really interweb? That's the best you can do? (insert sad trombone riff here)
Now, the creative part of my brain has been tweaked and I'm now trying to figure out how to put a permanent tunnel through to Scifi land. So, I'm pondering, what kind of universe can I create and why isn't it done more often? Here's a project that is on my list of distractions to construct (and yes it is an anachronism): A winter HOTRAK module with a line running through the legs of an AT-AT that happens to be the appropriate scale being assaulted by a snow speeder that also is of appropriate scale. Upon further reflection, track based trains don't work too well in the Star Wars universe, so I can't comfortably get much beyond the "single module." There is the possibility of "steam punk," but it really isn't my bag - there is no land in my nerd-dom where it could comfortably call home. I suppose the Warhammer 40K universe would work, but I don't want to buy some O or OO to modify, I've got a lot of HO that could be sacrificed to such projects. This really leaves me with "brew my own" based on kitbashing WW models that are appropriate for Scifi at HO scale.
That is, unless there are other ideas out there? Let no large rock not be looked behind by someone in a red shirt!
Thank you to those that managed to make it to the end of this train of thought (I can't believe I wrote that...)
- Shawn
PS. This was fun to write and whether anything physical happens from it will remain to be seen. But at least I got it off my mind.