Hilton and Mears: Bookmarks a model?
My good friend Chris and I talk regularly and often send photos of our modelling progress to one another. This shared passion for model railways crosses the Atlantic and nurtures our creativity; it has been the catalyst for so many wonderful conversations…
Of late we’ve found ourselves ‘busy being busy’ with life and whilst the friendship rejuvenates there has been less time for the shared writing we’ve enjoyed previously, so consider this a short intermission.
Through Paxton Road, Ynys-las and lately Lochdubh, Chris’s encouragement and enthusiasm for N has become an infectious and much appreciated tonic. As work starts on another N gauge chapter here in North Wales I shared the attached, showing progress on the lead actor, a Farish 03…
"Just ‘damn those crank pins’ - no amount of disguise can hide their size".
"I could spend days just staring at this".
"I don’t disagree with you
but
Is this that connection between a love of model trains and the real trains they’re based on? In our quest to obscure any of these “tells” it’s nice there’s still something that bookmarks: really wonderful model".
I love this thought and feel ready to embrace it, I’m not a traditional finescale modeller, I’m not interested in scale wheels and fine clearances. My finescale approach is creating artistic believable miniatures that help the viewer get lost and find their own story through mine, yet never quite forgetting that this is all toy trains.
If you’ve enjoyed this rather short edition of Hilton and Mears why not take a look at our previous collective works. Until next time, more soon…
Hi James
ReplyDeleteHope you are enjoying your holiday.
Another excellent piece of work and it is so difficult to see at first look this "finescale" approach is not the real thing and certainly I cannot believe it is N-scale. I agree looking again that the crank pins do detract a bit. I wonder if the pins and the coupling rods had been in the same colour ( weathered yellow for example ) then perhaps they would have stood out less.
However the scene just says the end of a shift ( or maybe the crew is somewhere discussing the lack of cricket today ) and is evocative of my days around the real thing in the 1970's and 80's
Best regards
Alan
Thanks Alan, good to hear from you. The model’s crank pins are are pretty obvious that in yellow, there is a photo of it in tomorrows blog before I had weathered it so come back and take a look.
DeleteThat said, as Chris describes I love the fact that these tells are there, the connection between model and a passion for trains.
"creating artistic believable miniatures that help the viewer get lost and find their own story through mine, yet never quite forgetting that this is all toy trains" - I can get behind that sentiment
ReplyDeleteFantastic, thanks James, good to see you back on the blog!
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