Railway Enthusiasts Visiting Nystrup Gravel (1/35)

With all the images from my little gravel railway you'd sure expect it to have been visited by photographing railway enthusiasts. Although the workshop manager Thorleif Petersen was a very active photographer, many images and film sequenses from Nystrup Gravel were shot by some of the first Danish railway enthusiasts. I wanted to have a few of the pioneer trainspotters on my 1:35 railway.

Before painting. I still need to go over both figures with sand paper and file once more before I prime them.

My two trainspotters began as a US military cameraman from Plus Models and a MK35 man in long jacket (figure F176). The cameraman had his trousers carved into a pair of plus fours Tintin style and fitted with a head from a MK35 figure. I removed all military insignias and made some subtle changes on the beret. The figure's arms were positioned to operate the camera. As the camera tripod is quite a flimsy construction in 1:35 scale I placed it on a piece on thin brass sheet together with the figure. After painting camera and figure I will cover the brass sheet with ground cover and a few grass tufts.

A Plus Model's image of a painted cameraman assembled straight from the box.

I'm looking forward to see these guys chase the trains on Nystrup Gravel.

The enthusiast in the long coat took much less work. All I did was to build a simple model of a 1950's Rolleiflex 2.8A. I used a piece of plastic stock and detailed it with a few slices of plastic tube and some spare etched metal. The camera's sling was cut from copper foil.

Before I sat down at the worktable, I cleared the shed from my layouts. It takes only 10 minutes to dismantle the layouts. So while I'm certainly not anywhere near being a good woodworker, I have nevertheless made something that actually works.

The intermediate backdrop (a roll of heavy paper) has been removed and the modules ready for dismantling.

Last module standing. A moment later all four parts of the Nystrup universe were moved out of the garden shed and back on the shelves in my study.