A black and white model railway

[rocor]

Has anyone coloured their layout as though it was a black and white photograph?. When modelling a railway from an earlier period, the only photographs that the modeller has to work to are in black and white (or sepia). Those old photographs have a certain ambience that is totally different to that of a colour photograph. I was just musing today if anyone had ever tried to capture the mood of those old images, by colouring their layout only in tones of an old photograph.

[Rivercider]

I do not remember seeing a full layout modelled in black and white, but do remember seeing a diorama modelled in shades of grey

with the addition of one or two items in red, I think depicting a cold winter day.

Very effective it was too. though I can not remember the name,

 

edit - I have found it!

At Railwells 2017, 50 x 50 Shades of Grey, a 3mm dockyard scene by Nick Salsman.

cheers 

Edited May 22, 2018 by Rivercider

[TonyA]

I believe there was one on the Carl Arendt website but I cannot recall when. I will look tomorrow unless anyone can find it in the meantime.

 

Tony

[rue_d_etropal]

I know of at least 2 layouts being done this way a few years ago. Well certainly one, but it was mentioned at the time that someone else had done one before. Not an easy task I believe. I think the one on Carl's website is the one I know of, but it had been done before.

Edited May 22, 2018 by rue_d_etropal

[griffgriff]

I remember reading some old copies of the RM once and all the modelling featured was in black and white

 

Griff

[Zomboid]

I remember reading about a model coloured in various sepia tones.

Though it might just have been an idea like this rather than something anyone built.

[Marly51]

Richard Stott’s ‘StalyVegas’ featured in BRM November 2927 issue has a limited colour palette which is almost sepia - very atmospheric and clever.

Edited May 22, 2018 by Marly51

[sharris]

edit - I have found it!

At Railwells 2017, 50 x 50 Shades of Grey, a 3mm dockyard scene by Nick Salsman.

cheers

 

I remember seeing that one in 2016 at the CMRA exhibition (the last time it was in St Albans before moving to Stevenage). Very nice it was too.

 

https://moorestonemodeller.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/50-x-50-shades-of-grey-first-outing/

[ian]

I believe there was one on the Carl Arendt website but I cannot recall when. I will look tomorrow unless anyone can find it in the meantime.

 

Tony

 

It is here: http://www.carendt.com/small-layout-scrapbook/page-65-september-2007/

 

It is only after you have been looking at the photo for a few seconds that you realise that the table on which the layout is resting is brown rather than grey!

[Dava]

If you modelled a British postwar industrial town, say in 1946, it could be close to monochrome with the combination of pollution and almost no fresh paint for 6 years, under grey skies. At least that was my mother's recollection of Central Scotland in that period.

 

More recently, a rainy day in Blaenau Ffestiniog prior to the slate tips being cleared: uniform slate grey.

[coachmann]

More recently, a rainy day in Blaenau Ffestiniog prior to the slate tips being cleared: uniform slate grey.

Easier still if its raining. Just build now't 'cos you cant see ow't.

Edited May 22, 2018 by coachmann

[rue_d_etropal]

It is here: http://www.carendt.com/small-layout-scrapbook/page-65-september-2007/

 

It is only after you have been looking at the photo for a few seconds that you realise that the table on which the layout is resting is brown rather than grey!

I remember Bob building it. At the same time I was actually using similar fruit/veg bioxes to build layouts, one reason I remember. Never got a chance to see it in reality, I think it either found a new home or got recycled(?)

 

At the time there was discussion on another forum, and I am sure it was mentioned that the idea had been done before.

Edited May 22, 2018 by rue_d_etropal

[Talltim]

Richard Stott’s ‘StalyVegas’ featured in BRM November 2927 issue has a limited colour palette which is almost sepia - very atmospheric and clever.

Strangely I was just reading that issue, it randomly appeared in my house. I think my father in law must have bought it in his travels of second hand shops

[devonseasider]

As mentioned earlier, "50 x 50 shades of grey" by Nick Salzman who's based Okehampton-ish.

 

It's 3mm scale, 50 x 50cm & finished completely in grey, except for one background figure with a splash of red.

One of the most atmospheric layouts I've seen, being a superb rendition of a dank, dismal, winter's day.

It's really a glorified "shunting plank", but very absorbing, having operated it for a while at the Thorncombe show last November.

(Nick is a long-time supporter of our annual show, having attended for the last 3 (or 4?) years with a variety of layouts)

 

Well worth hunting out at one of its exhibition appearances.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

The first exhibition layout I ever saw - and easily the largest for many years, but then the De Havilland club did have members who worked in aircraft assembly hangars! - was 'Havil', and the muted colour palette was very effective. That was what the UK's coal powered industrial towns looked like, even when the sun shone. (This layout in reduced form still exists, and can be seen at the club's exhibition.

['CHARD]

I remember reading some old copies of the RM once and all the modelling featured was in black and white

 

Griff

 

The nurse will only be a minute, she's just dealing with someone with a bath-tap stuck on his toe.

[Spitfire2865]

If you did build a B&W model, you could easily model the GWR at the turn of the century without anyone yelling you got the livery wrong.

[griffgriff]

If you did build a B&W model, you could easily model the GWR at the turn of the century without anyone yelling you got the livery wrong.

Of course they could.... they might be wrong but that wouldn’t stop them

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

If you did build a B&W model, you could easily model the GWR at the turn of the century without anyone yelling you got the livery wrong.

 This leads in the direction of a moderately famous father (cannot recollect a name at present) who answered his children's questions about the why of old monochrome photos and newer colour photographs by explaining that it was nothing to do with the photographic process, which simply recorded what was there. No, the world had largely been monochrome in the past, as it was simply too expensive to colour it all in; because this required a very skilled artist to get it right, of the sort that could produce 'old master' paintings. But the colouring in technique was made simpler and cheaper in the 1930s by Hollywood, and then during WWII the Americans coloured in huge swathes of the combat theatres, because it made it harder for the enemy to effectively camouflage their equipment. The end result was that the technique became so cheap that now the whole world is fully coloured in. Kodak then led the way in development of a special film that showed the world as it used to appear in monochrome, for those nostalgic for the good old days...

[sharris]

If you did build a B&W model, you could easily model the GWR at the turn of the century without anyone yelling you got the livery wrong.

 

Of course you'd have to choose the grey tones to model the spectral sensitivity of the film used at the time. Early purely halide plates (19th century) were blue sensitive, and not sensitive to other colours. Orthochromatic film and plates (from about the 1880s) extended to the sensitivity to blue and green, while more modern panchromatic film (in general use by the mid 1920s) is sensitive to the whole visible spectrum (although still more so to the shorter wavelengths). So the darkness or brightness of a particular part of the livery will depend on the plate/film technology available. 

 

Thus the true pedant may castigate you not just for getting the livery wrong, but for representing it with an anachronistic film spectral response. 

Edited May 24, 2018 by sharris