Continuing the build of the Summer Fair for British Railway Modelling Magazine...
I decided to incorporate a portable miniature railway; a few attempts were made at scratch-building the track, before I decided to just use Z (with some repositioning of the sleepers on the ancient Marklin rails).
The train itself, modified from an old Ertl diecast Thomas the Tank Engine range 'Edward' and 'Troublesome Trucks'.
It's probably a little overscale for a portable line, but it looks the part (and ended up inspiring the next article I did for BRM, a back-garden miniature railway).
I thought it would be fun to have some inflatables in the scene, for that colouful vibe. Oven-baked polymer was used to create...
...a bouncy castle, slide, and some paddling pools.
The 'inland beach' concept is something I've seen a few places in recent years, so thought I'd incorporate it. Not least because I had some seaside-themed figures in the spares box.
A slightly-chaotic, jumbled scene.
Space Hoppe racing, using oversized map-pins.
I still needed some colour in the scenes, so a lot of the figures gained balloons made using map-pins, for that full-on, pre 'worrying about waste and the planet' atmosphere. When I was young we went to a village fair with school, with the game of 'how many free balloons can you get from the stalls', followed by inevitably 'how many of them can you save from getting popped on the bus back to school'.
On a similar note, I had some plastic spheres from work, and they were painted up as beachballs to scatter around the scene; again, that summer atmosphere. I tried to arrange cameos with mainly the kids playing with them.
Finally, custom-made signage and posters...in case you can't tell, I've been getting into practising for going back to doing a bit of kids book illustrations lately. Hallie (in the bunches), and her friends, and various suitably summer fair-themed scenes for the posters and the like around the village.
This turned out to be just the first of several bright, colourful, summer-themed pieces done for BRM (indeed another one, the seaside toy shop, is in the same issue!) and I'll probably be getting a reputation for doing kitsch tat. I better do something really grim and industrial soon...
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