July has seen another article in the model railway press, a piece for the Hornby Collector Club. The idea that I (Ben) had was for a 'moving on from the train set' type piece, looking at expanding a starter set, and working to a low budget of £100.
This has been a project on the boil for a while, so long that I took the research pictures during the dark days of Covid. This is the embryonic preserved railway in Dolgarrog...
...proving it can be sunny in North Wales.
And inspiration for the other end of the layout, Middleton in Leeds.
The basis for the layout, all bought second-hand.
I'll do a post, in nauseating detail no doubt, on the model making blog for all this, so instead I'll focus on things from a photography perspective.
It's all glamour, doing miniatures shoots. I'd planned to photograph the layout indoors using a studio light, but by good fortune I managed to finish the layout in time for the heatwave that gripped the country back in June. If anything it was too warm out, very uncomfortable to work scrabbling around on all fours because I didn't have a big enough table for the layout and the backdrops, but it got the summers-day lighting I wanted.
A bit of photoshop jiggery-pokery.
I was getting a bit worried about the effect the heat was having on the layout and the trains. Focus was a bit of a challenge, working that low down with the sun so bright on the screen of my mobile that I couldn't properly see the pics, but it was too low down to comfortably use my SLR.
Really showed I need to do some better backdrop boards though, these are getting a bit scruffy now.
Truth be told, the project wasn't 100% finished, but it was complete enough for the article; far end of the summer, I'll probably return to it with a bit more detailing done, for another piece based more on Middleton.
And here we go- the Hornby "Collector" mag is turning into a nice regular gig, and there's another project or two on the cards at the moment for it...
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