Archive 8: Childhood Canadian H0…

The last of my 'Archive' series takes us back to my childhood and shares some slightly re-touched and cropped photos that show some of the qualities of this expansive Canadian project that was the 'last hurrah' of my Dad's skills in scenic modelling. The flat expanse and massive sky of the prairies contrasting with the deep canyons and narrow shelves of the rockies... 

Unfortunately the quality of photos of my previous childhood layouts are quite poor, but these here were taken on my SLR camera on print film and probably with a tripod. They have stood the test of time well, and show some of the scenic work in particular up to a very good light. 

The back scene in the rockies was a joint effort, I remember painting much of the mountains copying photos and slides of our visit in 1989 and from books. We tried to include some of the peaks that were fond memories, above you can see the back side of Castle Mountain in the distance. Over these basic shapes my Dad painted trees, hundreds of them, and he captured the wiry and ragged nature of the forests in the mountains well - blending them with the foreground really nicely. The right hand end (above) was intended to be more lush and green, whereas the left hand side was a lot dryer, and more shale, inspired by the area towards Vancouver.

Dad's appreciation of geography and geology, combined with a skill of hacking expanded polystyrene and altering on plaster filler, then carving and colouring it, led to some fantastic and believable rock formations. I remember the first time I saw the rockies I was blown away by what he achieved with just a small trowel, butter knife and craft blade...

The team work also extended to rolling stock on this layout. A lot of the grain cars had been bought as Intermountain kits, and not all in Canadian liveries. Dad patiently assembled these in the evenings, and I remember airbrushing them with my first airbrush and repainting them into Canadian colours - my pride and joy was the hopped above, a H0 scale 'Scoular' model that I repainted and weathered. It always seemed to capture the subtle look of the streaking, I think I used powders, and the brown and yellow were suitably dulled down. I suppose it was my 'weathering' coming of age - after childhood experiments, some heavy, some un-successful I learnt what worked and what didn't - observing the prototype with a gentle hand paid off for the first time with this model.

So with that, the archive series is over for this festive season. I hope you have enjoyed the posts, I hope you have enjoyed time off with friends and family. I'm writing this before Christmas, so hopefully Covid will not have disrupted plans for any of us - and as today is the first of January, I wish you well for the year ahead. Lots of exciting things to come here and wider with my other projects. Best wishes, and more soon...