Chris Nevard

The snow is packed down behind the car of course, so that why you can't see the tracks

nevard_101115_combwich_58086_IMG_8408_web, originally uploaded by nevardmedia. 58086 on a cold but sunny snowy morning in 1957 awaits with the 11am service from Combwich to Evercreech Junction. People who know me know that I'm not one to be taken for a ride by cottage scenic manufacturers passing off household products as bespoke items for model railways, then charging 1500% over the odds for sticking it in a small clear bag and a trashy photocopy. OK rant over, the snow is cream of tartar, something that you will probably have in your larder with a sell by date of March 1993. And oh yes it vacuumed off fully after taking a few snaps is is now July once again. W I D S C R E E N wallpaper version here!

It's interesting that what you say about the F stop, digi capture does appear far more sensitive to diffraction giving a softer image if the lens is stopped down too much. Yet one can use the same lens with film and have less of an issue - it must be the way the sensor reacts to very small apertures. I have a 55mm Micro Nikkor which is a very highly acclaimed lens, yet stop it down much beyond f16 and the image including the precise point of focus is not nearly as good at pixel level as at f11. But, use it on film at f32 and it is pin sharp!

Good luck with the layout alteration! I've heard of people sorting out the frogs on these points, but never a nice simple illustrated photo like this - BRILL!

Yup, just f16 and a whole 15 second exposure on a tripod with the camera set at 100 iso. I shoot in RAW which allows far better white balance control when converting the files to something useful. Sadly many small non-DSLR cameras don't have a RAW option, though many will do a very good job automatically setting the white balance just shooting JPEG and in this respect my little Canon is better than my Nikon (but shooting RAW gets around this problem). If you can swap out the energy saver for a traditional incandescent bulb, I suggest doing that because most cameras perform better under such lighting colour wise. The light is just one of those large modern low energy bulbs in a lampshade hanging from the ceiling. The lampshade will have increased the area of the illumination affectively which in turn will give softer shadows. The width of the light source is what effects the sharpness (or lack of) of the shadows rather than the light intensity (though people often get confused with this aspect and think that a dim light will give softer shadows when in fact it's the size of the lightsource). That's why sunlight is so unique because it's a pin-point that is 93 million miles a away. To replicate sunlight with very sharp shadows indoors it might be worth messing about with a single LED torch kept still from as far away as is practical. I imagine the exposure could be quite long though.

Above, the doors opened 30 or so minutes ago.... Combwich's first outing in 6 years finally took place at Wycrail in High Wycombe on Saturday 6th November at what is rapidly becoming 'the' quality one day show in the SE. Above, my first through train from Combwich to arrive at the terminus of CK's lovely Bleakhouse Road! On Friday night Combwich was crammed into a hired Ford Transit for it's 35 mile journey first thing the following day. After an easy 45 minute ride pretending to be a yob in a van from Guildford to High Wycombe, I managed with a little help from Ian Redgate who'd come all the way down from Mansfield the evening before, to get the layout set up in about 40 mins. This is surprising, because Combwich was never designed to go on the road, with baseboards varying from 5ft 3 to just 18 inches long as the layout has evolved in length and width over its 30 or so years existance. With everything looking good, the power lever was cranked on like firing up the Frankenstein Monster for the first time. Everything appeared to work as it should until I set the road running parallel to the platform, then everything went dead, deader than Nunhead Cemetery on Boxing Day, and not what one wants with just 45 minutes before the doors open! Fault finding wasn't helped by the fact that I had temporarily lost my reading glasses! After 25 mins of much cussing under the layout I tracked down (more a lucky break as the result of random prodding and shaking) a couple of wires that had crossed and the problem was resolved much to my relief. I then found my glasses hanging safely off the backscene - duh! The very first through train from Bleakhouse Road! Apologies for all the cameras that appeared to record this, we've been waiting for years for this moment!! At 10am sharp, the eager punters started to wander forth in all shapes and sizes. As you no doubt know, model railway buffs are a mixed bunch from the darn right weird to elequent and intelligent upstanding members of society who are real pleasure to chat too, and as usual I got to meet all of them. There were by all accounts a few smelly ones too, but luckely I didn't have a pleasure of meeting any of these, but Combwich is quite wide with a high backscene, so distance may have masked me from the smellier of the smelly brigade who've converted their bathrooms into somewhere to play Thomas and keep their dead mother's stuffed head. The highlight of the day and something mooted over a year in advance of the show, was to attempt run trains between Tim Maddocks' superb Bleakhouse Road and Combwich, and this we did via a bespoke cassette that could carry an entire train between fiddle yards and then allow it to continue its journey via the respective layout to its destination and then return. Much fun was had making up the oddest train formations to try to flumox the crew of the opposing layout. I imagine because of this there'll be several letters of complaint in the next issue of the Model Hornblock Journal with the usual miserable set getting hot under the collar about us having the occasional bit of fun. Operationally the layout considering its hasn't been let out for 6 years worked reasonably well, but was occasionally spoilt by the odd derailment due to a sloppy locking mechanism on the station throat point. Looking to the future, and with this in mind, and with some of the other points starting play up as the day went on I've decided to remove all the old Peco units and replace them with something a little more positive in action before the layout's next outing at RAILEX at the end of May 2011. After chatting to several people about this, it would appear that something called COBALT is the way to go. YUM YUM! Oh yes, before I vanish back to the real world, Wycrail is the only show so far where exhibitors were served delicious homemade cake actually served at the layout - now that has to be a first! Roll on next year! For a section of happy snaps from the show, CLICK HERE! Blogger Phil Parker also went to Wycrail, read his REPORT!

nevard_101109_CQ-oldquarry_DSC_9887_web, originally uploaded by nevardmedia. Bath shed's 8F 2-8-0 No. 48660 propels a short rake of 16 ton mineral wagons under the loading screen at Cement Quay Old Quarry Wharf. This shot was taken under available artificial room light rather than studio lighting and there is no computeryjiggery apart from the fake smoke effect. A lot of people new to photography these days think it's all done on the computer, sadly I'll have to disappoint them because good old photographic techniques still rule. Whilst much can be done on a computer to compensate for poor or inexperienced technique, it's still better to get it right in the first place abiding by rules that go back to the era William Fox Talbot. However, digital has allowed colour photography in a wider range of lighting situations than in the days of film, because it would be near on impossible to colour correct under today's low energy domestic lighting. And of course to add a bit of fake smoke one no longer needs to resort to cotton wool which is better left in the wife's make-up bag. Here is a BIGGER VERSION of the above photo.

Gosh, it looks alot better than what it's going to connect too - errm, I did tell you Combwich is EM didn't I?

Agreed, the second one is pretty good too! I'm not always a fan of B&W because it often look muddy. but this one works really well! Andy Y - let's see this one top right