May The 4th Be With You; X-Wings

I've been doing an awful lot of railway modelling lately, and felt like I needed a little palette-cleanser. And with May the 4th, Star Wars Day, coming up, I threw this together at about a weeks notice.

I'd picked this kit up online; I already had a toy X-wing in the same scale bought about the time Rogue One was out, and had a smaller Revell X-Wing in the unbuilt kits box. 

The Revell kits were well-moulded in some senses, but there were loads of moulding points, pips, and a bit of flash to clean up.

Interestingly the smaller-scale one is pretty well identical to the larger, just without the ability to pose landing legs, but there are a few bits (like the engine intakes) which the smaller one does a bit better.

A problem I had was that the mini kit, bought about 12 years ago, had long lost its canopy, so I had to quickly manufacture a replacement from plasticard. The Rogue One toy X-wing had a solid canopy, so even though the larger-scale kit had a transparent cockpit glass, I ended up modelling all three fighters painted solid, to match.

I left all three fighters in their base plastic colour (this needed to be a project done in a hurry to meet not only the deadline of May the 4th, but fit in around a busy week at work and a build for a mag too). I copied the toy with regards to detail painting the red and cream, and some gunmetal on the engine exhaust cowlings, then washed all three over with Citadel Nuln Oil to bring out the panel lines and give some texture.

The squadron lined up... interestingly there are some details the toy one does better than the model kit as well, and some where it's a little cruder. Still, it would do for the pics I had planned...

Last year, I did some pics for Gerry Anderson day, and then some more for Warhammer, with aircraft kits photographed out on location, as if they were in flight; no photoshoppery and minimal post-production, trying to do as much as possible in-camera, so I built a rig to 'fly' them off. I wanted to more of the same this time with the X-Wings...

Ah, duct-tape, the Technicians Best Friend. The rods for the aircraft are a pair of telescopic aerials for radios, the top ones (the rig would need to be inverted) are garden canes, because by this time I'd arrived at the shoot location in Wales, and couldn't get anything else locally. 

The rods inserted into thin plastic tubes, cut from 1mm syringes (we have thousands of these at work, out of date stock our department has ended up with).

I needed a few last background details; these were built literally hours before we set-off for the Bank Hol weekend in Wales. Two torches, some housepipe connectors, some plumbing parts, food lids... Cobbled from bits in the 'useful scrap box', we have the defensive towers. As you can see from the silhouettes too, the sprues from the kits were also re-used, more on which shortly...

So why Wales? Well, I'd had less than a week to build the X-Wings, I certainly didn't have time to build a Death Star. Luckily, Criccieth, a few miles from where we'd be staying, has this rather brutalist bit of sea defence work on the north beach...

A Long Time Ago (yesterday morning, in fact)

In A Galaxy Far, Far Away (Criccieth, West Wales)

With a rather handy drainage channel, which was about as close to a Trench as I could think of for the pics. I'd used it before as a canal in a project, and it seemed ideal here with a bit of set dressing.

And here we go; a bit of minimal work in post-production with the brightness and contrast largely hides the various rods holding the fighters up.

For the gun turrets, I used transparent plastic drinking straws, which are illuminated by the beams from the torches, to look like laser beams.

"Stay on target..."

"I can't manoeuvre!"

"Stay on target!"

More playing with the brightness and contrast with a huge slab of concrete, to try for a starfield backdrop.

Shame about the tufts of grass, but I liked the slabs as a backdrop too.

A nice, fun little project; I took some more, using the beach for a direct "Rogue One" reference, which I'll post separately later in the week :)

 

Garden Railway Saturday; National Garden Railway Show, Stoneleigh

Something a little different for this weeks Garden Railway Saturday- out first model railway show where we were on the 'exhibitor' side of things.

Having worked late, we got to Stoneleigh, near Coventry, fairly late but with a beautiful sunset greeting us.

A walk from the hotel on the site to recce where we were going was a pleasant end to the day.

The next morning, high-vis jackets donned, it was into the venue to see our office for the day.

The layout had been built the afternoon before, by Big Boss Editor Phil, ably assisted by Andy, who set up the Digital Command Control side of things.

It was a rather nice layout- lots going on in two gauges, multiple locomotives, and the impressive selection of real plants (borrowed as usual from a local garden centre).

A few fun things for people to spot, including Shaun the Sheep, who we took mild joy in moving around the layout and re-posing.

We'd shamelessly bought a few of our models along; the ice cream cart being in the current issue (which was being given away at the door).

Also the luggage barrows...

...benches...

...Estate Loco and the Permanent Way Hut.

Wait, a few seconds ago! Digital Command Control, you say? Yes, the outer G-gauge line was operated digitally. The Future!

Points could be controlled...

...and the tram, two diesel shunters, and tank loco. All had sounds, all had extra features, the tank loco also had working steam effects.

It was great fun, and we did a lot of channelling the Scout Leader side of things we do, and got kids to drive the trains. A pair of children came back again and again, one of them needing to be practically dragged away by his mom at closing time.

We managed a few laps of the wider show; 1500 visitors through the day apparently, a record.

We were next to a huge 32mm-gauge line, which was very impressive. Mix of live steam and electric trains.

Yellow Classic Camper Van.

Lovely gauge 3 class 08 on Warton Road.

Winner of the model I most wanted- this terrific gauge 1 pug.

I'm a sucker for a miniature railway; this one was incorporated into a massive gauge one layout...

...as was this boating pond.

Sheep on an Irish-themed layout.

Nice tramway scene.

Slightly Wes Anderson-angle.

So; despite all this model-making malarkey, particularly in recent years, this was our first time exhibiting (technically... I mean yeah, we hadn't made the layout, but we were helping run it). It was a fantastic day; it was great to finally help out on something concrete for the mag, it was fun getting the kids to drive the trains, and yes, it was a lot of fun actually playing with a big noisy train set too. We'll be back next year for more!

Railway Research Trip; Liverpewwwlll

This was an interesting research trip- the Museum of Liverpool, mainly to get some decent shots of the Overhead Railway exhibit.

Oh, and the magnificent "Lion"; I actually have one of Hornby's models of this, though not sure what to do with it. It was very much an impulse purchase with some reward points and money from an article a few years ago, so I took the opportunity to get some decent reference pics.

The set-up in this hall is pretty impressive; the recreated section of the Overhead Railway is really very impressive, it's such a shame there's only two cars from the old trains still survive.

There's the potential for a piece for Hornby later in the year, so again, it was all about getting reference pics.

Back to "Lion". The balconies allow some useful angles.

There's some interesting models in this gallery too; I love all these custom-designed, child-friendly interractive exhibits.

Some vintage tinplate, made in Liverpool. Always wanted one of those green tender locos.

A very impressive exhibit; the big model of the Festival site from the 1980's...

...and a slightly gloomily-lit model of the docks.

Mindyou, the real docks were a bit gloomy outside. Still, a useful visit, and at least there's something of the old Overhead Railway preserved. The Museums organisation have quite a few railway artefacts, some very rare, but they're stored out of sight. It's nice that at least some of it is on show though.