Testing a Hypothesis

 

I've decided to test a hypothesis that I've been hearing a lot from a client. He's an old-school model railroad guy, and he's really accepted the conventional wisdom that if you must build a structure from cardstock, it has to be reinforced with lots and lots of wooden strips inside, because moisture from the air will warp it. 

Well, this is nonsense. I've got models I built ten or more years ago that show no warping at all, and I haven't taken any special care of them.

I'm going to test the far extreme of the conventional old-guy wisdom by setting two small cardstock models on a shelf in my bathroom for a week. Next Saturday, I'll take them out and see if they're still true and if the surfaces are still flat.

If they survive without warping at all, I'm going to consider the myth completely busted. I doubt that will be the case, but it would be nice. 

If they warp, I'm going to see if they unwarp when they dry out -- that's really the result I expect. My hypothesis is, they'll almost certainly be fine in the long run, and possibly in the short run, because paper breathes. Under the extremes of the damp shower air, I expect the cardstock to expand slightly, and then return to normal during the day. I could be wrong, but that's my guess, based on experience.

If I'm wrong and they become permanently warped, I'll agree that under extreme conditions, cardstock models will warp. But for the record, I've never had it happen under normal conditions.

LET THE TESTING BEGIN!

Transition Era Figures

Tough to find, the little boogers.

Musket Miniatures has sculpts that are pretty rough, but a pretty good range of different people in lively poses. For some reason, the figures are found under "CATALOG" and "Rustic Rails" -- I wonder how many customers they lose by not having the figures under a link called "Figures"? The site also lacks photos of a lot of their line.

Scale Figures also has rough figures, but a very nice range of people and poses. Why they think I want to click on a link to HO figures to see a list of figures, THEN click on a link for some of those figures and THEN click on an image of a group of figures to see what they look like... well, the mysteries of model railroad suppliers' web sites run deep.

While I'm crabbing about model railroad suppliers' web site design... Last night I found a nice long links page and I clicked on all of them. Repeatedly, I came across the following annoyances:

• Search results below the fold. Don't know how that's a thing, but it is. It's as if a customer came in your store, asked to see a product, and you showed it to her under a marble countertop.

• Long-winded pages that required me to scroll down, down, down before they showed me any products. I encountered everything from essays on why they could no longer offer product X (before they showed me any products) to wedding announcements and other personal stories.

• Pages where every single item in the product line was "SOLD OUT."

• Front pages where I searched and searched around for a link to their product line, only to discover a small "ENTER SITE HERE" button... below the fold.

• Music that started automatically.

• Sites that insisted I download fonts to make their pages display properly.

• Sites that insisted I download a PDF catalog... and a PDF price list (to cross-reference them myself)... and then a PDF order form, which I was supposed to print and mail in with a check. I know they're old, but that's just about every barricade they could put between themselves and my money.

• Conversely, there were a couple sites that had a big announcement that their online shopping cart was working... at last! (That doesn't inspire confidence...)

• Sites with their links named so whimsically that there was no guessing where they might lead.

Some sites had two or three of these problems.

Okay, I'm done crabbing. For now.