I had a phone chat today with an old model-building friend. He told me he’d gotten interested recently in a modeling genre that I didn’t know existed.
These folks buy die-cast models of police cars. They do a great deal of research, then buy decals and various accessories that let them modify the models into the police cars of various cities, state highway patrols, etc.
It seems there are a number of firms out there (this was news to me) who cater to this particular hobby with decals, aftermarket parts, and references. And there’s a mass of information about the subject on the web. Some of these guys wire intricate electrical circuits that make all the lights in the models function properly.
My friend, who normally builds aircraft, warships, and spacecraft, got interested enough that he bought a snap-together SUV kit and finished it as a Navaho Nation police vehicle. As a matter of course, he weathered it to look like it had spent some time patrolling the desert and muddy roads of Arizona. He then posted some pictures of it on a website that these folks maintain.
Much to my friend’s surprise, he got lots of favorable comments from police car model enthusiasts who had never heard of weathering.
This story reminded me of something I hope all of us already knew, but sometimes tend to forget. The term “scale modeling” covers a tremendous amount of ground - and it’s unfortunate that so many people get so caught up in their own little portions of it that they lose sight of valuable, interesting stuff that’s going on elsewhere. My main interest for the past 50+ years has been sailing ships, but I’ve learned a lot from - and had my eyes opened to quite a few techniques and products by - model railroaders, model aircraft builders (static and operating), modern warship builders (ditto), car modelers, military miniaturists, armor enthusiasts, and probably some others that I’ve forgotten.
I got into that mindset largely because I worked my way through grad school in a hobby shop - a species of business that I fear is now almost extinct. Thirty-plus years later, I still regard that time in that hobby shop as time well spent. It also got me acquainted with lots of interesting people (some of them, admittedly, certifiable) whom I probably never would have met otherwise. And I’ll never again make nasty cracks about anybody else’s hobby.
I confess I don’t have much inclination to put aside the schooner I’m working on and build a police car. But I do think we’d all build better models, and have more fun doing it, if we’d become more aware of more of the interesting genres - and people - that are out there. A modeler who spends all his/her time on one sort of model is missing a great deal of the pleasure that the hobby has to offer.