This Monday Motivational is a little different because it’s my own stuff, I’ve got pictures of two projects that were till recently stalled. The scratch built flat car stalled since August and the Proto87 track for my speeder shed diorama since March. Both stopped in frustration, the flat car because it didn’t sit flat empty on the bolsters and the track because it was frustrating and glue wasn’t holding things together. So what changed?
I wrote a post about goals and these are two of the projects that were on my short term list. The flat car itself was a really silly reason, I had finished the bolsters and installed the trucks but found it wouldn’t sit flat without weight on it. A truly simple fix that I just wasn’t motivated to do. Yesterday I had a few minutes of time and decided to take a small file and try to level out the bolsters. A couple minutes and it was sitting nice and that movivated me to paint the trucks with the metallic steel paint as a base for weathering (side note it is sitting flat in the photo, I just took it from a low angle to show the painted trucks and it ended up looking like it tilted)
Matt's Railroad Blog 
I’m really glad to see updates on these projects and your renewed interest in them. It’s amazing how we can be slowed to a stop isn’t it?
I’m drawing a lot of inspiration from your flat car project and thinking about trying to build a covered hopper for my own layout.
Thanks
/chris
It really is amazing, an example of this was was my raging river project (https://bestsnowman.wordpress.com/tag/raging-river/). I started it on a whim in 2011 building benchwork (with the idea being a free-mo mini-mo which is why it’s so tall) using scrap wood from another project. Was over 2 years before I did anything else on it.
I’m glad you are getting some inspiration from it! If you build the hopper you should blog about it. That flat car has been a bit of a gateway drug for me, I’ve been trying things I normally wouldn’t and have been looking for plans for other types of cars to build.
And this “I’ve been trying things I normally wouldn’t” is exactly where and what I want to get back to.
Well said
/chris