Model Railroad Blog

HELP!

Problem solved!  Thanks so much to my blog readers.  You guys are great!

The pub. in question was the December 1976 issue of “Railroad Modeler” magazine.  Never in a million years would I have found that on my own.

_________________________________

In the late 1970’s an excellent article on the Los Angeles Junction Ry. appeared in one of the rail magazines.  I’m pulling my hair out trying to track down the magazine and date.  Memory can play tricks on you, certainly after forty years.  However, I don’t think I’m losing my mind because the article inspired me to build a loco. based on the article, and I still have the unit.

DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHAT MAGAZINE THIS APPEARED IN AND WHAT MONTH?

My guess is that it was probably 1977 or 1978 but could have been 1976.  My hunch is that it was in one of the Carstens mags from that time period.  Going through the Trains.com magazine site I was able to look at every issue of RMC and Trains during that period and didn’t see it.  I spent many (way too many) hours tracking down about half of the Railfan & Railfan mags from that period.  Nothing.  Otto Vondrak is checking his issues but so far nothing.  If I had to guess it was in fact Railfan & Railroad but there are no directories going that far back.

Was there another popular railfan mag. on the racks during that time period?  I don’t recall one.  Any help would be appreciated.  The winner will get a one-month free subscription to this blog….

Threading the Eye of the Needle

In his must-read piece, “11 Lessons Learned” in the April issue of MR, Tony Koester writes “One huge lesson gleaned from even a cursory review of the V&O was to model the ordinary.  It’s all too easy to compile a list of eye-catching prototypes to model, and the inevitable result is that everything competes to be the star of the show”.  In that one phrase he’s summed up the essence of composing an effective model.   Easier said than done, however.  If we select our elements solely by individual interest then we do run into something that isn’t plausible and the visual competition Tony cautions about.  Swing the pendulum too far the other way and we end up with something that has no visual traction whatsoever.

Vermeer’s “Milkmaid”

If you struggle with this issue, don’t feel bad, Johannes Vermeer and Edward Hopper made their living painting “the ordinary” and have gone down in history to be what many consider to be the greatest painters of all time.  Having read the biographies of both, I was struck by how obsessed each was in their quest for subjects to paint, often spending weeks or even months in their search. A written description of one of their works gives no hint of the total mastery that is apparent when you view them.

 

On my desk now is the last structure for the LAJ layout, one that will be relatively large and located front and center. Given the prominent location and size, selecting the best subject truly was a case of threading the eye of the needle.  Shown in the image above are three candidates, all within a block of District Blvd. I took a long, hard, look at K&V Metals (structure A).  Such an interesting candidate…but too interesting.  Structure C is certainly representative but would leave anybody un-moved.  Ultimately, I selected structure B, in the center.  Its art deco architecture and curved glass blocks at the entrance are interesting and yet the subdued colors and low height keep it from coming across like a neon sign for South of the Border.  Time will tell but this is how I go about striking that delicate balance between interest and over saturation.

March 13, 2017

A Day of Photography

 

I had a lazy Sunday available to me yesterday so I decided to spend it puttering around with some photography on the LAJ.  Getting a good shot generally takes me the better part of a day.  I prefer low angle photos that give the appearance of late afternoon with its long, clearly defined, shadows.

To begin, I took a test shot with my phone and blew it up so I could check for blemishes on the layout.  Things that aren’t obvious to the naked eye can be glaring in a photo.  Make sure no ballast is stuck to the rails, you have no derailed rolling stock, oddly leaning poles or trees, or sloppy scenery.  In my case, the utility pole behind the cross bucks was overly thick so I replaced it with something thinner.

Position your camera on a tripod so it’s at a height that you’d expect for a person standing on the street.  I use the timer on my camera as opposed to triggering manually. Canon Rebels tend to shoot dark so you usually need to bump the exposure compensation (Av button) up a notch or two.  I generally bracket at a few exposure settings anyway.

Photography is largely about getting the lighting right.  If you decide to rely on room lighting, as opposed to photo floods, there is simply no way you’ll get decent results.   You’re simply wasting your time if you try to go that route.   Photo floods are only a few bucks.  Clamp them to a broomstick, set your camera’s light balance to match the bulb you are using (Tungsten in my case), and you’re good to go.  After a lot of experimenting, I got the best look by using just one bulb positioned about seven feet from the scene.  All of the room lights were turned off and the blinds pulled.  I clamped some cardboard to the fascia to create the shadows on the face of the structure to the right.

After a few hours of trial and error, I finally settled on the shot above as the best candidate.  Previous efforts either had lights spots in the wrong area, dark spots in the wrong area or both.  Even when I got things close something seemed to be missing.  There was just a blah “flatness” I couldn’t put my finger on.  I studied some railfan photos taken in the late afternoon and came to the conclusion I didn’t have enough shadows in the image.  Placing pieces of cardboard in front of the layout to create the necessary shadows solved the problem.  Ideally, I would have liked to been able to get one more dark long shadow in the foreground street but couldn’t get it to work out without blocking the image.

On to photo editing (I use Adobe Elements), which in this case didn’t need much, just a little nipping at the margins to improve things a per cent or two.  The first step in photo editing is to crop out the areas you don’t want. Next, I used the levels tool to lightly adjust the entire photo, tapped up the contrast a bit as well as the sharpness.  I went back with the selection tool and made another pass with the levels tool in select areas.  I darkened the shadows slightly with the burn tool.

Next, I shifted over to Paint Shop Pro X which has my Corel Knockout background removal tool (a plug in).  I removed the wall background and experimented with various sky images in my library.  Generally I’m not one for white puffy clouds but, in this case, that was the background that looked best.  Finally, I went back to Photoshop Elements and the clone tool to clean up a few blemishes from the background removal process.

For those that want to dig deeper into the photography side of our hobby, Bob Sobel has written an excellent tutorial on model photography HERE.

 

LAJ 3/5/17

In my last post, I discussed some thoughts on scene composition and, as part of that write-up, the importance of non-descript “framing structures” to surround a focal point structure.   On my LAJ railroad, May-Vern Liquor is the focal point of the layout as you enter the room.  Just to the right of it is the framing structure I just finished.   It’s representative of the older structures on the LAJ but not so over the top or interesting as to compete visually with May-Vern.

I used two different structures for inspiration.  4455 Fruitland Avenue, shown above, was used for the street side.  Google Streetview had a number of well-lit images to choose from.

 

For the rail side of the structure, I used the image above taken on my trip to the area in 2015.  It’s on the Horn Lead a bit west of Everett Avenue.

Here’s a view of the model showing the rail side of the finished structure.  I used some cut and paste to extend the prototype photo to make it long enough.  The gutter and downspout are .060″ styrene painted with a 50/50 mix of Model Master “Sand” and flat white.  Weathering of the spouts and gutters was with artist oils and chalk.  The door was constructed using an image from another structure on the Horn Lead. Although the actual door was relatively clean, I modified the image by photo shopping on some tags.  To give depth to the door I printed two photos, cut the recesses out of one and then adhered it on top of the other.

As I become more experienced with photo lamination I’ve moved to adding more depth to the structures.  The roll up doors in the photo above are recessed a full quarter inch and the panel insets above the doors .060″.  Adding the recesses looks much better but adds complexity as there are lot more photo pieces to work in (column sides, etc.)

Finally, the core was made with .050″ laminate for the base and roof with 1×2 pvc “wood” for side bracing.  The sides are .060″ styrene to which I added styrene strips for the columns.  I’ve uploaded the images I used in the Photo Wallpaper section of the Help Section.