I need your help

Greetings all you intrepid paper lovers.  We have mentioned recently that we want to do some Chama buildings and also some mine tipples.  We have been working on them, but things do take time.  I need your help with my current task.  One of the things that we have to be able to do for either of these projects is to be able to produce timber trestle bents and cribbing in various sizes.  (The buildings themselves are the easy part.  It’s the support pieces that really mess up a schedule.)  I would really appreciate it is you all would look at the three pictures and let me know your opinions.  Does this look enough like wood or do I have to make some revisions.  One interesting thing about this bent is that the material to make it costs about 75¢, but the NBW cstings (Grandt) are like $5.00.  And they are only on one side.  (NO!, I can’t make paper NBW’s)  So please let me know what you think.  Everything is straight so don’t pick on that.  I was just so close the image started to distort.

Thanks for your help.

Update on Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 9:55PM by Dave

Thanks everyone, so far for your comments.  Yes!, of course the NBW need rusting.  I am only concerned with the wood.  Yes, there will be a couple a three different colors, probably.  (Who knows, maybe more.)  This particular pattern is supposed to be fairly new looking.  And I do have examples of new, fairly light colored timbers.

Dave (Even though it says Thom Above. Sometimes, software just has a mind of its own and won’t do what you tell it to.)

Just put up a new kit. Enclosed Water Tank

A couple of Indy Pix

Just a couple of pix of our good buddy Russ Haigh’s Model Contest entries.  All of his buildings are made with Clever Models materials.  What you see here is done in On18, which is O scale models on N gauge track. The train is custom designed by Russ.  Thanks Russ

Thoughts on the Indy National

Hi everyone.  Well, we’re back from the Indy, O Scale National (combined with the annual Fall O Scale Meet held every year in Indy) and while it was a financial sucess for us, I think I speak for alot of the vendors that this was not one of the best shows they have ever attended.

Please, these are just MY opinions, not anything I would attribute to anyone else.

While the venue was nice, one of the two rooms was VERY poorly lit. (The room we were in.)  That is something that show management should have realized and done something about.  They did bring in some big work lights on poles, but it didn’t help much.

My big issue was that there was no one there that was not a vendor.  Thursday and Friday, our sales were pretty good, but we didn’t sell anything to the public, because they weren’t there.  We (the vendors) were just selling to one another, which always happens to a certain extent, but this was extreme.

I think we were all hoping that Saturday would be the “big” day, since the public would be off and able to come to the show.  Instead, Saturday was dismal.  There were times when I counter less than 30 people in the room and 90% of those were vendors.  Many of the vendors just packed up and left.  The rooms were a ghost town by 3PM when the show was scheduled to close.

I realize that show management has little control over attendence, but I think they need to do a much better job of promoting the show.

I don’t mean to be so negative, but I just don’t have anything positive to report, other than it was great to see the usual crowd that travels the show circuit.

Dave