Selwyn_Times: February 21, 2024

Selwyn Times Wednesday February 21 2024
16
NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
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SMALL SCALE: Paul Penning with his 3D-printed model of
The Famous Grouse Hotel, about 1:160 of the real building.
Above – Paul’s N-scale model railway, which includes the
former Lincoln Railway Station. PHOTOS: GEOFF SLOAN ​
Life in miniature: Lincoln buildings
added to hobbyist’s model railway
• By Daniel Alvey and Geoff
Sloan
WHEN PAUL Penning was
gifted a train set as a boy, he was
instantly hooked. Now many
years down the track, he’s been
able to reconnect with the hobby.
The 74-year-old has spent
the past five years making
miniatures of buildings for
his model railway, including
several scale replicas of Selwyn
structures.
“My grandfather gave me a
model railway for my birthday
when I was very young and I
had a model railway to about the
time I went to high school, then
of course life got in the way,’ Paul
said.
“My grandchildren love it
now.”
His collection of scale replicas
includes The Famous Grouse
Hotel, Lincoln Library, the
former Lincoln Railway Station
and Prebbleton goods shed, Lincoln
Union Church and, most
recently, Coffee Culture.
Paul is a retired aircraft
engineer, who worked for
National Airways Corporation,
Mt Cook Airlines and Air New
Zealand.
He said of building the
miniatures: “I just enjoy making
them. I enjoyed the challenge of
designing them on the computer.
Since retirement, I’ve taught
myself two computer programs,
one to work a 3D printer and one
to work a Cricut, which is a poor
man’s laser cutter. And I make
the models from those.”
The 3D printer was a birthday
present from his children, and
his wife bought the Cricut.
“As part of my career I’d seen
3D printing being done and I
thought actually I could use this
for model making.
“So my three children built
houses and they asked me to
make models of their houses,
so they could see. So I started
doing that and then when we
were building this house here in
Lincoln, I built a model of that,
and it’s just gone on from there.”
He built the model of
Coffee Culture because his
granddaughter worked there, but
generally, it’s just buildings he
finds interesting.
“The combined Presbyterian
church I thought was a great
looking building, the Grouse I
thought again it’s good looking,
interesting architecture, and the
same for the library.”
Now he has a running N-gauge
layout (1:160 scale), which
includes buildings such as the
Grouse.
Paul’s goal is not to replicate
every detail of Lincoln, but
rather to follow a general
New Zealand theme featuring
buildings from the district.
“They’ll go creatively in their
own spaces, I don’t want to
be too realistic about it,
otherwise you get yourself into
a bind.”
He is constantly thinking
about what to build.
An OO-gauge layout (1:76
scale), with structures such as
the library, is next on his list.
“Lying in bed last night, I
thought I need to build another
railway layout so I can run a
lot of the models of trains and
locomotives that I’ve built. So
maybe that will be the next thing
I do. Though because of the fire
in the Port Hills, I wondered
about doing the Lincoln Fire
Station.”
Paul recently took his model of
the library to the library.
“They were quite interested.
I was sort of surprised. They
wanted to put it on their
Facebook page. There’s been
quite a bit of response to that.”
REPLICAS: Paul with his
1:76 scale version of the
Lincoln Library inside the
library.
PHOTO: SELWYN LIBRARIES
Left – a model of the
Prebbleton goods shed.
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