Choo Choo Charlie

In the number seven spot of my Top Twenty Five list, I wrote I have an inexplicable attraction to model trains. I’m sure it’s genetic—and therefore there’s no cure until you’ve spent forty-thousand dollars on a massive layout which serves no other purpose than burdening your children upon your death. Fortunately, I’m only about hundred bucks into it. More fortunately, I have absolutely zero time to spend on it, so I may escape this dreaded fate after all.

While my ultimate goal in life remains becoming the kind of published author that has his books actually bought and read by other people, that isn’t to say deep down I don’t have these complete time-wasting tendencies. I thought I’d share a few pictures with you.

First up is the classic Atlas Passenger Station kit. The first picture is a typical, unpainted version. I have to go on record that I hate these “out of the box”, plasticky looking things. I understand that there are those for whom the railroad is the most important thing and scenery falls way down on the list. I’m the opposite. I want killer scenery and if the train doesn’t run, who cares. I’m just taking stills anyway.

Unpainted:

Anything worth doing, is worth doing right. That’s one of my eight dozen or so mottos. Here’s my version:

And now here’s a photo of my model, placed in front of a photograph of real train tracks and real trees. Then I aged it. When I was talking about the photographs being the most important thing, I wasn’t kidding. Think about it. No one’s ever going to have thousands of people visit their basement to see their work. But they just might have thousands of people visit the web site to look at pictures. You do the math.

Here I dropped them into another photograph. It’s a real hack job, but definitely gives you an idea of some of the photographic possibilities.

Next up is a small trackside shanty. This was Rachel’s first kit. I like the roof work.

The three most important things in real estate are: location, location, location. Similarly, the three most important things in photography are: lighting, lighting, lighting. Nothing makes a model look more real than direct sunlight:

Here’s a closeup of the brickwork:

This one is a work in progress, but another good example of how a little paint and plaster can turn a bland piece of plastic into something worth looking at:

Last stop on today’s tour: my first (and currently only) attempt at weathering a boxcar. Here it is out of the box:

And finally, here it is rusted and weathered, and slightly out of focus (I didn’t have the good camera at the time):

So there you go: another peek into my mind. Oh, and if anyone didn’t get the post title, click here. Think of it as carbon dating.