The Naked Silo

My friends invited me to see Rush in Toronto this summer and it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up: they were my companions for my first Rush concert in 1987 and drummer Neil Peart has recently announced he's retiring, so it would bring the four of us full circle, being my companions for my last Rush concert. On the way back to the train station, we mused about possible dioramas involving songs or ideas from Rush's repertoire of over 150 songs. There might be some ideas somewhere that we didn't explore, but of the ones mentioned, the only one that appealed to me (as a builder) was "illustrating" the song –or elements thereof– " Red Barchetta " from their album Moving Pictures. And, most appealing to me, it would involve building a barn. The kit. The bag on the bottom left containing white plastic parts is the plow from a Revell pickup truck I'll be converting into one of my uncle's fencing trucks and the bag with the silver...

I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co...

I'm in the early stages of building a diorama based on one line from the song Red Barchetta by Rush  (I like the idea and it'll use up a lot of surplus parts from other builds –also: I get to build a barn!*). Since the setting is a barn in the future, with the barn being quite aged, and the car (the main focus) being rather contemporary, I wanted to somehow indicate The Future by adding some advanced technology. My initial impulse was to build a hover or jet bike of some kind but that might upstage the main scenario, so I opted to make the barn off-grid but still powered. Scratch building some solar panels for the roof is still an option, but the idea of a weird and futuristic small scale wind turbine lodged in my brain, so I gathered some bits and pieces from a couple of Messerschmitt kits and a tank kit I bought as kitbash donors for other builds. Not everything above was used, and other parts were added, but keen-eyed veteran model builders will identify engine...