Having gone for six decades, merely collecting model railroad stuff, but never getting started on an actual LAYOUT, meant I had no good place to pose rolling stock and vehicles, for photos.
It was time to get my feet wet. (Or, as what turned out, my face and hands covered in plaster of paris and acrylic paints.)
Here is a photo I took of a boxcar lettered for the giant layout that has flourished in my MIND for many years…the slogan of the railroad, given the only passenger service is pulled by an ABA lash of F7’s, is: “In Aquandary? Take a flying F, daily…to Ferrago, and all points east!”
Even a cheap digital camera can take a nice shot, helpful for noticing such things as the shine on the SP Daylight Orange door, looking as if I need to model a little h.o. scale guy standing there aiming a pressure washer at it. This shot, viewed on a 30 inch monitor, is quite something. But I just HAD to get a decent “stage” built, to pose such equipment on.
I’ve only done one other project: a Sunkist Fruit Warehouse, where I took it past simple assembly (from an ancient SUYDAM kit)–and that was so long ago, I’d forgotten even the basic rules, such as adding the plaster of paris, to water, and not the other way around.
Forging ahead, damning any torpedoes like that, I banged some wood together, stapled on some screening, and glued down the used “Reddi Trak” or whatever that stuff is, that I’d found (I didn’t think the photos would show the track, so didn’t care…but I thought having a RERAILER was a stroke of genius, as I’d be changing models I was photographing, quicker than Hugh Hefner does.)