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For all who could not attend, here is a look into the exhibition room in the nicely restored church yard building: After the exhibition has ended, the pictures are now for sale. Price per copy: 50 euros. Framed art prints in professional printing quality. Paper size: A3 (420 mm x 297 mm, 16.5" x 11.7"). Black painted wooden frame with float glass. Signed certificate on the back. Of each picture, only one copy of that kind exists! A description of all pictures, you find here: http://www.joernpachl.de/exhibition.htm The pictures are currently on storage in a local Fremo club facility. If interested, please ask Heiko Herholz (heiko.herholz@ebuef.de) from the local Fremo group if the desired picture is still available. He will also manage the sale.

On the weekend 24th-25th June 2023, some of my model railway mixed media pictures will be shown at an art exhibition at the Pfarrhoffest (church yard festival) in Wustermark, Brandenburg state, Germany. Under the headline 'Virtual Railway Worlds', the exhibition will show 12 framed prints with TT scale model trains (mainly North American and Soviet prototypes from the 1940s to the 1960s) running through digitally created fictitious worlds. While some pictures show authentic scenes from the relevant era, others seem to be fallen a bit out of time with trains from 20th century prototypes running through fictitious and slightly dystopian near-future settings. For making the virtual environments, I started with using screenshots from computer games that were provided by friends from the gaming community. Later, after most of these guys had stopped gaming, I switched to the AI engine Midjourney for making the digital background scenes. The 12 pictures of the exhibition are a selection of typical pieces arranged in a timeline from 2016 to 2023 to show that development. Wustermark is a Berlin suburb that can be easily reached by an hourly regional train service from Berlin (travel time from Berlin Central Station about 30 min). Google coordinates of the exhibition site: 52.547531,12.946213

Those, who still remember my older postings or follow my accounts on Flickr, Deviantart, or Instagram, know that I made many photo scenes in which I combined model photos with virtual backgrounds or environments. At first, I used edited photos, later I preferred screenshots from computer games. For this, I collaborated with several artists from the in-game photo community. Unfortunately, most of these partners have either moved to other platforms or switched to another kind of digital art. As a brand new development, AI-based picture generators have now become available for everybody. That offers me the fascinating opportunity to create my own virtual pictures to be used with my model scenes. Below is the first result. The background picture with the large warehouse structure was completely created by the Midjourney AI engine. Sorting cars at the warehouse by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr In the future, this could also be interesting for 'normal' model railroaders, e.g., for

Metropius is a dieselpunk art project run by a group around the Australian film director Dan Macarthur, see https://www.metropius.com/. After having made many pictures in which I blended model railrway scenes into virtual environments made from screenshots of computer games, I have now used screenshots from a Metropius film for the same purpose. In particular, streamlined diesel locomotives fit very well into the art deco environment of the Metropius universe. Street running (Metropius tribute) by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr Train on bridge (Metropius tribute) by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr The fictitious Metropius city also has a secret industrial underground world that keeps the city alive. That offers opportunities for some rather dark railway fantasy scen Diesel delivery by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr The Metropius project is still very new. Right now, there is just a 20 min movie. In the future, there will be more films, a TV series, and a computer game.

The owner of the YouTube channel 'N scale dystopia' (aka @modelrailroader on Instagram) has just started a new project to model the underground railway from Resident Evil: https://www.youtube.com/c/NScaleDystopia/community Looking forward to see the final result.

Tried something new: TT scale (1:120) model trains blended into a virtual environment made from a movie screenshot: Night hazmat delivery by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr See also my latest article in my MRH blog: https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/42702

After being bought by a local railway company, a freshly revised V 60 diesel shunter arrived in Finsterwalde, Brandenburg state, Germany. The paint scheme is still from the former owner Hörseltalbahn and will be replaced soon by fresh paint. Back from revision by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr

I will not repost everything, just some selected pictures. I store my model railway pictures in my public albums at Flickr and Deviantart. Istagram, I mainly used to keep in touch with some interesting people, mainly from the diorama and art scene.

For those of you who followed me on Instagram: Instagram permanently deleted my account without stating a reason.They just said it's for violation of the terms of use without giving a clue which rule I might have violated. That's ridiculous. There was no excessive use, no spamming, no forbidden content, no copyright violations. It was just about model railways. I have now established a new account on which I will also repost some of the most interesting pictures from the old account: https://www.instagram.com/joernpachl/ The first picture posted on the new account just gives a short statement on the situation:

I very like the different industrial fascades you made from parts of the Auhagen Baukastensystem. That Auhagen product has indeed a lot of capabilities.

This text, I originally posted in my MRH blog. Over the years, I built a number of small layouts and dioramas. Since there is not sufficient space to have all of them on permanent display on my bookshelf, I designed several dioramas to fit into some kind of office storage equipment. The first piece of that kind was a diorama with a fictitious scene in the Chicago region, for which I used an unusual boxfile concept. In contrast to typical boxfile layouts, the cover is used as the baseboard, while the box contains a three-dimensional background scene. In the closed position, it fits easily into my bookshelf. Unfortunately, German manufacturer Semikolon stopped making that particular type of boxfiles. So, I couldn't make more dioramas of that type. There are more pictures of that diorama on Flickr. In 2009, I made a diorama for display at the modell-hobby-spiel fair in Leipzig, Germany. It is a fictitous scene with a closed firehouse and a rail yard in NYC. Since I always travel by train, I made that diorama fit into a storage box so that it can be easily carried around. The box is not part of the diorama, however. By this box, the diorama can also conveniently stored away. See more pictures of that diorama on Flickr. My latest diorama, which I made as a stay-at-home project during the curfew of the COVID-19 pandemic, was designed to fit in an office storage box of which the cover is used as the backdrop. This concept has turned out to be a very practical approach. I will probably make more of these pieces in the future. Also here, more pictures are available on Flickr.

With the end of the lockdown in Germany, I also finished my diorama. For convenient storage and transportation, the diorama was designed to fit into an office storage box of which the cover is used as a backdrop. The diorama shows a fictitious scene with an old station depot located at a junction at the edge of an industrial area somewhere in the Rust Belt in the 1960s. The interlocking limits controlled by the tower near the depot are only partly shown. The map below shows the cutout to be seen on the diorama. The turnouts and interlocking signals are outside the modelled scene, only the train order signal is present there. While the depot is a laser-cut kit, the tower is a resin model. For more pictures, visit my Flickr account or follow me on Instagram.

Here some more pictures. Since the diorama is more or less finished, it's now time to stop the lockdown. Finished diorama with backdrop by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr The old tower by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr Police action I by Jörn Pachl, auf Flickr

In the meantime, the diorama is almost finished. Here is a first photo of a total view, still without backdrop.

Maybe, a small diorama might be a good start.