Toy train photography gallery (post your awesome shots here)

In addition to all the props/accessories that were brought home with my collections, there were a plenty of other ones that have been kept in my room the whole time. Last Thursday, I took these five photos to take advantage of certain props after moving two boxes into the shed and sorting their contents. The first four are remakes of Thomas & Friends shots from random Season 1 episodes, while the fifth did not use a reference. Each one has been edited to correct the engines' expressions and add three other enhancements.



In an attempt to "cover up" the fact I never had proper bushes, they were represented by third party trees laid on their sides (with the trunks and branches covered with smaller trees). Terence looks more like he mowed the field rather than ploughing it.



Among the props happened to be a neat looking telegraph pole (from an unknown source), which has a peg at the bottom and can fit into a Plarail tree/signal base. It is actually missing two insulators, and both photos I put it in were doctored to reinstate them. I forgot how tightly the roof parts on the HiT/FP Tidmouth Sheds went together, so I chose not to build it out of fear the connectors might break. Even the door walls were hard to detach from the turntable when taking the set apart. Funnily enough, the coal staithe was replaced by a crate of tomatoes (one of many vegetable crates from some kind of farm playset/s, which also made up the side of the platform Sir Topham Hatt was on). Didn't feel like taking one of my packing foam pieces for it.



In this shot from "Whistles and Sneezes", motion blur and Gaussian blur were used to make Gordon appear to move. FP Talking engines are geared to move slowly and cannot free wheel, so my usual tricks didn't work. My cardboard Henry looks a bit poorly made now, so I've thought about making a third version using photos of a TOMY one for measurements.



I no longer have another orange coach that looks like Annie/Clarabel, so the third coach had to be my custom Henrietta. Not sure where I got the fence from (like most of the other props), but it fits right in despite being taller than it should be. The other half is a gate that opens and closes.



Lastly, a shot with the Elsbridge crossing to show what two of my cardboard vehicles look like in a scene. The two figures on the bench were passengers from the bump 'n go bus mentioned in this post. There are two others like them plus the driver, who is bigger and has his arms in a steering wheel position. A little too big for Plarail, but I'm sure they'll work better for my bigger scratch built models. Like all the other edits, the headlight and tail light effect was done in Paint.NET. Night shots will be great fun to do in that regard.

Of all these, the "Trouble in the Shed" scene is my favourite when it comes to the composition and how the props were arranged.