Clockwork Trains and pizza.

This project has been ticking away quietly in the background for a big chunk of the year.  The Micro Model Railway Despatch (an excellent online model railway mag) runs a competition most years to build a micro layout, within certain restrictions of size, shape, and format.  For 2023, it was a 'pizza layout', that is a generally circular run of track, fairly simple, in under 2ftx2ft.

I (Ben) had planned on entering an earlier take on the contest in 2022, but a hospital visit knocked a hole in that plan.  This year I was determined to do it, but struggled for a concept, until I realised I could use it as a home for my little clockwork of vintage, tinplate, O-gauge clockwork trains.

I'll go into painful detail on the model-making blog at some point, but in a nutshell, Amy scrounged some wood from her work, and used cutting it to circles as way to practise with their band saw.  Scenery was planned to try and make this little layout look a bit bigger in the photographs, so it would be as varied as I could make it (river, overbridge, cliffs, level crossing, station).

I was struck with a bit of a dilema, anyway, in that 'classic' toy train layouts were a bit bare, but the modern scenery techniques didn't really match the clockwork trains.  I settled for going suitably retro with dyed sawdust and papier-mache scenery.

For the shoot for the competition entry, I needed a suitably retro backdrop for the photographs (more retro than our little 2000's-built end of terrace).  I borrowed the lounge at the in-laws suitably historic house instead.

Good as the pics looked, I thought I'd get a few more with the blue sky backdrop I tend to use for my Hornby Collectors Club shoots...

...so a few days later, I set it all up again on our table, borrowing a studio light.  Always a bit tricky doing these projects in the bleak midwinter...

This was a really enjoyable build, and this is definitely one which won't be getting broken up for parts.  I'll probably be doing a few more shoots with this set now it's built too, and maybe one day we'll have a house big enough to display it properly.