Toy Trains

I have long been inspired by two of my online friends, Chris Nitz and Jon Stolarski, and the macro toy photography that they do.  Chris even ran a little monthly photo contest that started as being exclusively Lego based but later evolved into a more general toy themed challenge.  I tried a few times to get interested in the Lego aspect of the game, but my interest kept drifting as I have never been a big fan of Legos.   I do however have an interest in toy trains and more specifically HO scale model railroads.  Over the years I have acquired fairly large collection of model trains, as well as other rail road toys.

Sadly these toys have been boxed up for a few years as we were renters and I never wanted to really get unpacked, but now that we are settled in and have our own place, I have been going through boxes and re-discovering what I have in the collection.  Since I live somewhere with a winter now, and the sun sets fairly early this time of the year, it only seems natural that I would start photographing these toy trains since I can do it indoors and at night.  This first image is actually of a pewter train that is a display piece on a real rail road spike, it has been sitting on my desk for years.

The John Bull

The John Bull steam locomotive was a very significant steam engine in the history of the railroad.  I won’t go into detail, please check out the link, but it seemed appropriate to include an image I made of an HO scale version that I have in my collection.  It also seemed appropriate to make this a black and white image, my first thought was to do it as a sepia, but I liked this more metallic looking black and white better.

I hope you enjoy these, and there will be a lot more coming.  If you click through to either of these images for a larger version, it will take you to a new gallery that I setup that will be just for these toy train images.