"Interesting scene at a model railway show" Topic

Went to the Newark Model Railway Show today with my boy and saw this interesting little cameo on a modern-day model of Knaresborough in Yorks. It was a representation of the Sealed Knot putting on a show at the castle. I particularly liked the 'rugby scrum' melee.

And some more general shots to enjoy the standard of the modelling…

Nick

Good looking stuff.

I like the standard of the painted figures. The few model train shows I've been to (Brisbane, Australia), all too often the terrain has been superb, but all the figures have just been block colours. It really undermines the great work done on the rest of the layout.

Love the viaduct! My only nitpick is that the stations seem far too clean, neat and tidy! More junk please!

Totally agree about the figures – my observation has been the same about block colours. At this show there were three or four layouts which had figures painted with shading and highlighting, which is three or four more than a few years ago!

This guy's last model was Rowland's Castle, set in 1944 just before D-day, so I suspect that he's a closet military modeller too…

Nick

The Soiled Nut!

The detail some railroad modellers do is amazing. But as others have observed they buy ready painted figures block painted that detract from their work.

I seem to recall that there was an article in RM a few years ago about how to paint figures properly like a wargamer would…it might have been by the chap that built Rowlands Castle now that I think about it.

Thing is it can be quite jarring to have two different painting sytles on one model – Railway modelers might weather a loco or rolling stock but they won't shade and highlight it like a wargamer might with a tank or armoured car. Real locomotives aren't given a drybrush highlight or a devlan mud wash before they leave the paint shop so why should model ones? Therefore painting your figures like that makes them stand out a lot more than they should. So if your aim is to build a model "photograpah" of the real world then shading and highlighting is the wrong method- and applying it unvenly will make it look wierd.

tl;dr

The figures in a wargames army are trying to stand out of the crowd and need help from the painter. Figures on a railway are to trying to dissapear into the scenery…

This opens up a number of interesting points.

I have seen this model at a show and thought the ECW figures were nicely done – the creator told me there were lots of conversions. However, I have to echo the comment above about it all being too clean. I actually found it a rather twee model and I'm told the rolling stock wasn't terribly accurate. At the exhibition I saw this at it won 'best in show' – I was surprised as there was another layout which I and a friend thought was clearly the 'best'. It was called St Meryn modelled in P4 – it looked so much more realistic than this layout.

I paint my wargames figures to blend into an overall scene. I also paint figures for a friend's model railway and aim to blend them into the colour palette he uses.

I've never really been very sure of the wargame trend to want figures to 'pop'. I sometimes think it came about because a lot of wargames landscape is actually too dark. I took the same approach a model railway builder might take and decided to make my terrain look quite light and as if bathed in daylight and conversely my figures are now painted to be quite subtle. No popping for me. What I don't understand with figures that 'pop' is that this is often only applied to the coats that are painted in an over-bright blue or red but the remainder of the figure is painted in more natural colours. Why? It just looks disjointed to me.