IN LIEU OF LAYOUTS

The inspiration for my little model dioramas has always been the gorgeous layouts that appeared in the Tri-ang-Hornby and Trix model catalogues in the sixties. I used to love poring over the catalogues and making wish lists of all the trains I wanted and suggesting to my dad what a great idea a big layout would be. Needless to say, neither really materialsed and the dream remained just that for many years to come. 

I have picked up a few bits and pieces along the way, such as some Minix cars and accessories and as mentioned earlier, some of the lovely architectural models.

 

Woodsy sent me down a rabbit hole some ten years back when he gave me a tin of german toy premiums, including some small trains, which came free with margarine and sweets and some Kinder novelties. Straight away, this rekindled my love of train sets and I set about picking up more miniture trains. The Kinder lines are about an inch long and highly detailed, with a gauge roughly about 'N', so finding suitable track to display them was quite easy. 

Almost all the models are based on either alpine or mountain railway locos, with some unusual freight shunters as well and a host of fascinating rolling stock such as transformers, chemical tanks and cherry pickers. I'd always loved the Tri-ang Battlespace military models, with tanks on low loaders and missile batteries, so I took some of the spare models and made them into military transports too.

Lone Star made a nice series of die cast trains and accessories and a car boot find of a box of railway goodies provided me with some plastic trees, telegraph poles and fences, as well as some track, so I set to making tiny tableaus with some of my favourite models.

Once more, I am sacrificing realism for a much more 'toy box' kind of look, to reflect the photos which came on the back of boxes and other packaging, showing other models in the range.

Each little diorama was entirely temporary, set up on a kitchen table with a handful of gravel and few accessories and swept up again after the shoot.

The Kinder models are made of plastic predominately, with tiny brass wheels and sit well on N gauge rails.

As they are models, its very easy to swap parts around and customise the locos to give even more variety.

The last shot shows an actual N gauge low loader with an Honest John Missile load, which gives an idea of scale.