Railway Modelling Realism: An Aspirational Guide

[2mmMark]

Oh dear, I'd so like to give this book a positive review as the idea is excellent. However... :-(

 

As I said, the basic concept is good - a book to inspire modellers. Unfortunately, it's not well executed. The text itself is fine but this type of book stands and falls on the quality of illustrations. Far too many are of poor quality, both photos and drawings. Some photos appear to be very low resolution, possibly lifted directly from internet forums. These are heavily pixellated. Other photos are badly lit, taken with flash which does the subjects no favours at all. In these days of digital cameras, there's no excuse to get this wrong.

 

Track plans are highly variable, some are quite nicely drawn, others are just simple line drawings with no attempt at curves, just crude straight-line ruler work and some are just scanned hand-drawn & hand lettered sketches. The kind of thing which often appears in quickly thrown-together exhibition guides.

 

What this book badly needs is a good art editor to apply a common style to the drawings and ruthlessly discard the bad photos.

 

Having said all that, there's obviously been some thought put into the overall content and the chapters flow nicely. The problem is it's pricing. Compared to A4 size modelling books from Wild Swan, Irwell Press, RCL Publications etc. which retail at around the £25-30 price point, this A5 book at £20 compares badly. The idea & concept deserve much better. Thankfully, I didn't pay full price for my copy, I got it heavily discounted on Amazon. For the full price of £20, it would have been a real let down. For under a tenner, it's just about bearable.

 

Mark

[Horsetan]

Thanks. One to avoid, then.

 

Thought: a bit like that other classic two-part "work": Model Railway Locomotive Building On The Cheap....