Back to buggin'

 

With everything tightened up, it was time for more charging around in the car park. This time, I took my DSLR, and stuck it on Sport mode. Driving and taking photos isn't easy, but these seem to have come out OK. 

 

 

 

I will say that while it's great fun to drive on a loose surface, those front wheels have no grip, and it's easy to spin out by trying to turn too tightly, with more power than is advisable. I'm only at the bottom of the learning curve driving this thing!

And yes, I did manage to turn it over. I should have read the comment about putting some Fablon on the body to protect it. Not that this would have helped the wing mirror, which also needs to be fixed back on...

First bug run

 

If this were an episode of Friends, it would have the subtitle, "The one where the wheels fell off" 

For the first run of my Sand Scorcher, I arrived early at the railway club, and made use of the rough gravel car park area near the model boat club. I reasoned that with a mix of loose stone and lumpy grass available, I could get an idea of what the beast was like, with hardly anyone else around. 

First up, take some nice posed shots with attractive backgrounds. 

Then switch everything on, and GO RACING!

I started by ragging it (as da kidz would say) around the stone car park. For a few minutes, all went well. We even took a trip on the grass, but I panicked a little as the car headed towards the water. Clouting a bench wasn't clever, and dislodged the driver, but we stayed away from the wet stuff. This thing is fast. And I am old, and slow. 

Then things went wrong. 

One of the rear wheels shot off. Looking at it, the stub axles had come out of the universal joint. Fortunatly, I had the appropriate Allen key in my pocket, it's the same one used to open up the waterproof box the electrics live in. 

Back on the "track" and started whizzing around again. but after a white realised the car turned better in one direction than the other. Investigating, the other end of the UJ had lost contact with the drive shaft, and the car was one-wheel drive.  More Allen key work, and we were back to normal. 

Things progressed well for another few minutes, until the other rear wheel shot off. This time, the retaining nut had come off the end. Try as I might, I couldn't find it, so the Bug went back in the car, to be fixed at home. 

Conclusion - this is great fun, but a little bit more fragile that I'd hoped.  

Is the camera too cruel?

 

Recently, Bachmann Europe, posted a teaser picture on their Facebook page. It's a close-up of the pipework in the soon-to-be-revealed LSWR Adams T3. Some of the comments were interesting: 

Very poor moulding......you can do a lot better than this !

Cheap moldings the excess plastic squeezing out of the molds

To me, thats not the best finish of the piping .And, is that the tender or cab ?   

Firstly, who can't tell the difference between the cab and the tender when they can see the firebox? 

Anyway, obviously, there were plenty of "experts" desperate to rubbish the model because of the excess plastic on the pipework. To put this in context, this isn't a production model, and Bachmann has fed back to the factory. And that copper pipe on the far right, is only 0.8mm wide. These parts are tiny. 

When I am feeling mischievous, and this sort of comment pops up on RMweb, I like to ask to see the commenter's layout. Since my job is to find the best model railways to photograph, any layout where this sort of issue is The Wusrt Thing In The World (TM) must be absolutely amazing. 

The question is usually met with an angry response that they haven't built a layout yet, but have a human right to an absolutely perfect model in any case.  

All of which makes me wonder if we were all a lot happier when taking this sort of photo required specialist gear such as a set of bellows, or at least, extension tubes, so people didn't bother. 

What we relied on was the good old human eye, sometimes aided by a magnifying glass. Anyone resorting to a jeweller's loupe, was considered a bit weird.  

As a layout photographer, my job is to make whatever is in front of me look as good as possible. This sometimes means pulling back a bit, and giving a wider shot because I realise the hard close-up will be cruel to the model. A magazine appearance isn't a competition for perfection; it's there to entertain and hopefully inspire the readers. Showing up some wobbly modelling does no-one, in my opinion, any favours. 

And before you ask, we don't fix things in Photoshop. Skies replace backscenes and the owner's tummy. Lighting is sorted out. Otherwise, what you see is what is there. OK, some clever shot choices make layouts look larger than they really are, but these are mostly the same view you can have at a show.  

My guess is that the T3 will look magnificent on any layout it appears on, and like most RTR models, will be the best model on the baseboard. Again, my opinion is that a scene where everything is a similar standard looks better than one with a few standout models, on a background that isn't anything like as good. I'm looking at you people who ballast with something from a garden centre...

Do we all need to find a little perspective when looking at these extreme close-ups?  

 

Saturday Film Club: I Tried the Hobby that Took Over Japan in 1999 (Hikaru Dorodango)

Polishing mud is a thing, apparently. Or at least it was 25 years ago. I'll admit the concept is interesting, but I think I can find other fun weekend projects. 

Cat wagon

My Dad loves garden railways, and he loves cats, so the obvious Father's Day present for him had to be an LGB 94969 ToyTrain cat flashlight wagon. 

Yes, it is a flat wagon with a plastic cat on the back of it. The cat isn't fixed down, so you can pick it up, press the button on its tail, its mouth opens to become a torch, and it makes a meow sound. 

He loves it. 

 I would love to have been in the meeting where this was discussed. At what point did it make sense?