Trains by Night, a trial shoot in 0 Scale

What, no comic?  Yeah, I figured I might get a few more regular updates done that way.

So, here's a project from a little while ago... I quite enjoy a bit of experimental, night long-exposure photography:

This is the class 101 on my local line, the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.

The only problem with this sort of thing, is it involves being out at night in an area filled with the Standard Mk.1 Drunken Teenage Hoodie Menace, and the rifle-toting poacher.  Plus, the railway doesn't run night trains that often.  Get a night with poor weather, and that's it.

Wales is a little better; this was a quick, improvised shot just to try an idea out whilst on the way to the beach for another night shoot, but with the rather sparse timetable on the Cambrian Coast, it means a lot of sitting around waiting.  I reckoned it was the sort of shot I could do in miniature instead, but wanted to do a test first to try the practicalities before investing time and effort in a working level crossing and similar.

The idea was to knock-up a simple test, something easily portable, and that could be set up quickly in the woods near my parents' caravan in Snowdonia (where I'd be within 2 minutes of a teapot, and a considerable distance from passing nutters.  Well, people more nutty than me messing with toy trains in the dark...)

I had some spare joist wood leftover from the shelf-building in the loft, so used these, in lengths that could be fit into a Really Useful wrapping paper box for storage/transport, but clipped together to make a decent length of line.

Ground cover from hanging basket liner, and Peco 32mm track which I'd bought years ago for a build that never happened.

The trains would be simple pull-along jobs, so I dug into the surviving bits from the Britannia Model Village...

...and these Pacer-esque units, converted from the coaches in cheapy 0-scale (ish) train sets.  This set had done good service in Britannia, and several projects since, most recently the Intercity test shoots back in the mid-2020's.

The plan was to try with two trains; one painted matte-black, the other with coloured carriages, just to see if it made a difference in the final shots.  It also meant I wouldn't have to overpaint the nice BR-esque two tones on the side of the older set.

The chassis were modified a bit, with the fake bogie wheels trimmed off.  The trouble is, they didn't roll very well at all on the track, with their massive toy wheels bumping along on the rail chairs...

This was remedied with some broken old Faller E-train wagons I had, so a bit of carving-up later, and I had...

...the toy carriage chassis, now with the Faller wheelsets.

Internal lighting was a bit of a lash-up, with battery LED Christmas lights on strips of wood, hot glued in place.  I used two different colour temperatures too, one cold white, one warmer yellow.

When I'd used these carriages as background items in "Intercity", I just used masking tape on the windows.  This time though, I planned to use some thin frosted acrylic.

Ta-da...

Out on location, with the two planks clipped together.

The train was pulled along by the high-tech solution of some fishing line tied to the loop coupling bar, threaded through a metal eyelet screwed into the end of each plank.

The carriage sides are a little more warped than I'd noticed on the workbench.

Trying quite a long exposure with the softer lights.

The warmer LED's gave a noticeable effect compared to the white set.  Also, the tail lights ended up a bit overscale.

Trying to light the embankment a little, to give the effect of streetlamps or similar illuminating the trackside.

The above shot shows a slight problem with the model train, and how much light was showing.

The issue (which I'll admit I'm somewhat overthinking) is that real Pacer's have their cab lights off when running, as demonstrated by the Worth Valley's set at Oakworth last year... 

...though if it was something like a W&M Railbus (seen here at Ingrow New Years Day just gone), with an open cabin, the lights would be visible spilling through from the cab too.

The problem is, those three windows at the front give quite a nice effect in the pics.

Well, it served its purpose as an experimental shoot for next to no budget, in that it showed the following facts; the trains need to be self-propelled (so radio controlled), probably larger scale, and I need a better camera.  The latter is now taken care of, and I have a better train under construction using some Gauge 2 components, for a shoot this year, hopefully around Easter...

Ivor the Engine (45mm Gauge)

Guess who's back, back again, this blog is back... slowly getting onto a regular update schedule with a bit of luck, and much to my own surprise.  A slight lull with the Day Job over Christmas has enabled me to edit some of the work I've been doing over the last 18 months, so while I edit some of the newer work ready to publish, here's a dip into the archives...

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So yes, Ivor the Engine.  Having dipped into the world of Ivor for a project in Lockdown, I returned to it again in late 2021-early 2022.  I'm a Scouting leader outside of the Day Job and this model-making nonsense, and with us doing various projects based on stories with the Squirrels Section (4-6 year olds), Ivor was a logical theme.  Basically we were working various projects towards around the stories, heading for filling the library where we have our meetings with a massive train set.

IVOR THE ENGINE

Which needed, amongst various things, an actual model Ivor, radio-controlled and robust enough to survive a 4-year old... 

The original planned donors for the project, but I quickly realised that it wouldn't work; rebuilding the loco body on the right wasn't going to look enough like Ivor.  The Playmobil underpinnings from the left-hand loco though would work nicely, with the radio controlled chassis being reliable and controllable.

To the laser cutter!  

Using scraps and offcuts, hence the unusual colour scheme.

I tried to cheat a bit with the lining, etching it on (in the hope that the plastic carrier film would act as masking), allowing the yellow to show through after wafting it with green.  Alas, in the end it didn't work, and the lining needed hand-painting.  The boiler, incidentally, is a parmesan cheese tub.

The not-quite-finished Ivor on the first night we tried the project with the Squirrels group.

The loco with the lining painted on- a little bit slapdash, but then it hopefully fits the drawn style of the original.  Also, a rather more subtly-coloured wagon than the one the youngsters did (of which more anon).  Whilst a compromise with the Playmobil chassis, I think it works for the project, and it's certainly robust- at least, once the whistles are removed.

PAINT YOUR WAGON

My weapon of choice... the Brummie Screwdriver.  I designed and cut some fairly ornate wagon frames, and used sewing rivets as bearings, which needed hammering in.

Production line.  We thought it would be easier to build the chassis ourselves, rather than let 4-year-olds try to do it, especially as it needed plastic glue.

Wheels and axels from the superb Binnie Kits range- where would garden railway modellers be without this range of parts?

We got the youngsters to decorate ply wagon bodies (with marker pens) to personalise a wagon each, and we PVA'd the bodies together.

Ta-da... Still not as garish as some actual privatisation liveries.

FIGURE IT OUT

The plan was that, rather than just driving trains around, the Squirrels would draw an activity card with an instruction, driving the train around to pick up passengers and take them to places around the layout.

We needed quite the range of townsfolk, as passengers for the activities, so I decided to draw my own inspired by the illustrations.  I also drew my own versions of the main cast.

Done the same was as the comics, by outlining in marker, scanning, a bit of tweaking of levels on photoshop and RDX, then laser-cutting.

An extra activity; a copy of the 70's board game, downloaded from the Smallfilms website and printed out on A3.

THE ACTIVITY

Ivor was unfinished for the night (due to a run of appalling weather limiting my time for spray painting until the night before the final meeting).  Also, the batteries played up, despite much testing, resulting in the need to use a backup diesel locomotive too.  Ivor would not approve of that, methinks.

Choir outside the repainted Early Learning Centre 'Happyland' chapel.  All the buildings in the town were done using this range, and expect them to appear more and more in the comic and projects because they're robust, the right scale, and pretty cheap second-hand at the moment.

A second go, with the finished Ivor.

Almost painfully Welsh stereotyping going on with this shot.

Well, the activity went pretty well in the end; plenty of ideas to implement for the next time we do it.

THE PHOTOPLANK

I decided I wanted to get some better 'hero' shots of Ivor to illustrate the project; it had to be compact and portable to easily fit in the car, both for storage and for transporting for location work.

Because I carefully conserve supplies and materials (or hoard junk, looking at it another way), I had a box with a board of 12mm MDF ready-cut to fit it.

An example of the buildings used for the project; old Early Learning Centre 'Happyland' toys.  Well proportioned (if slightly cartoony), cheap second-hand, and robust, whilst also clearly being UK prototypes, and so perfect for the project with a bit of a repaint.

Testing the composition; the board didn't give a lot of room, but then it only really needed to provide a set for Ivor to be the focus of each shot.

Eye-level shot, again, testing the composition.

After the building had a bit of a repaint.  A low retaining-wall was made with Playmobil castle spares (same for the rock in the bottom left, with a bit of stone wall), and a working lamp from Sylvanian Families  The landform was a mix of wood and foam packing materials.

Speedy ground cover, from hanging basket liner, cut long to overhang the edges and extend the field of shot a bit (as well as provide a bit of padding for when everything was boxed up for transport.

Shooting on location (after the track was ballasted with sand).  Appropriately enough, shooting in the Top Left Corner of Wales, at her old place on a farm on Anglesey.  I'd originally tried further away on the other side of Amlwch, where there was the old copper mine (with winding gear) but the weather was awful, and I couldn't get quite near enough for a decent composition.

Happy holidaymakers waiting for the train home (well, seaside holidays and steam trains are pretty much what I associate with North Wales).  The trees are cheap plastic Bonsai trees.

Ivor, Dai Station and Jones the Steam.

I also knocked-up a basic photoplank for 'trains in the countryside' type shots, with the leftovers.  Literally a plank (MDF offcut), and some more hanging basket liner with a spare bit of the toy track.

Though the main thrust of the project was to make the models for the Scouting purposes, I shamelessly bunged it over to Phil at Garden Rail Magazine, as I know he's a fan of Ivor.

Theoretically, a take on model-making with Scouts, mentioning this project, is also on file with another mag as well, but no sign of that just yet.

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Funnily enough, this was scripted last Feb, and yet it's still topical with the British rail industry determined to strike itself into oblivion...