When I started writing for modelling magazines many years ago, authors were able to remain safely hidden behind our word processors. The more gregarious might be found at exhibitions, happy to engage in banter over the barrier, but generally, readers were spared the sight of our ugly mugs.

All this has changed.

First, in common with much of the popular press, our faces started to appear in the magazine. We're not in an ivory tower, we're real people and real railway modellers too. At exhibitions, the BRM team can be found talking about the hobby all day.

Now there is another development – BRM TV.

The August issue of BRM is available in two forms. The standard magazine or a special “Premium” edition that can be purchased from branches of WH Smith. This special edition includes a DVD with features on the layouts Monk's Bay and Glendower plus Tony Wright looking at the Hornby P2, Howard Smith fitting a Train-Tech sound chip and me planting grass fibres.

Filming yourself for these sort of things is possible, but we are determined to make this the highest quality possible. To that end, Howard and I met our cameraman, Chris, in a photographic studio just down the road from the Wimpy bar in Peterborough. To be on the safe side, I'd had a hair cut and wore a nice clean BRM polo shirt.

The studio was set up with a white background and enough lighting to warm the place up faster than the air-conditioning could cool it down. Our plan was to film practical features, so we were weighed down with boxes. Chris had a mountain of expensive camera equipment as he does this work for several Warners titles.

After some set-up time involving one of us sitting behind a paper-covered table while Chris fussed around with the lighting, we got started. I volunteered to go first and gathered my equipment together.

It quickly became obvious that filming wasn't a simple job pointing the camera and telling us to get on with it. Every few seconds we stopped so things could be zoomed in on or shot from a different angle to provide the best view. Pretty quickly we learned to remember which hand we'd done something with or where a tool had been laid down so when the close-up looked the same as the wide shot (You'll note that I'm getting the lingo).

One problem I found pretty quickly was that all the heat makes PVA glue dry in a few seconds. My plan involved painting a small board with glue and firing grass at it. While the camera was moved it dried clear. Anticipating this, I had brought an identical spare board which was duly painted and grassed. Keen to do more than the basics, I then added more texture to the grass with fibre and flock.

Another issue was the green fibres getting everywhere. Not being the tidiest worker in the world, the nice white table soon looked like it was covered in green fur. It's a good job that part of the process requires a vacuum cleaner or the photographers who use the studio would still be picking bits of nylon grass out of their equipment now.

All in, my section took around an hour to film and the end result is just over 9 minutes long.

Howard then worked through his project while I made trips to a vending machine for enough cold drinks to keep us going. By the end of the day we'd been at it for just under 4 hours.

Chris then took the footage away to edit – another long job – and turn in to a DVD. As soon as these came back from the duplicators, he stuck a copy in the post and I watched it through my fingers. How do actors and TV presenters watch their performances?

Thank goodness for expert post-production, there's no badly fluffed lines and we both sound like we know what we're talking about. In the end, there are some things that are simply easier to explain by demonstration than explanation on the page so BRM TV gives us a way to cover those topics.

Happy viewing.