Monday Messin' Around

I spent an enjoyable afternoon yesterday tearing up rethinking Middletown a bit and even took a quick roadtrip to the prototype town to shoot some backdrop photos and get a better sense of the area. That's one of the biggest blessings of modeling something you're not only familiar with, but close to - quick, onsite field trips are easy. It'd sure be different if I was modeling Colorado!

ANYway, I'll get into what's going on in Middletown in a future post. But for now, I'll share some quick grab shots I took yesterday while mulling Middletown...

My dad has a 1946 Ford Business Coupe so when I saw this in a pile of HO scale cars and trucks, I had to get it. While it's a '47/'48 model, it's black with silver accents just like dad's car. And of course, it fits my era perfectly. Ol' Chet will have some fun toodling around the Valley Line in this. . .

It seems like forever since Don Janes and Greg Stubbings visited the Valley Line - actually, it was 4 years ago last week(!) But in addition to the memories of their visit, a lasting momento was supplied by Don who worked his weathering wizardry on one of my wagontop boxcars. It just looks so great, I had to take some photos of it along with my recent scenery efforts. Chet apparently approves...

The iPhone SE does a decent job of taking modeling/layout photos, but I'd really like to get a camera that does focus stacking (or maybe there's some iPhone software that'll do it) for better depth of field. I heard earlier today that the Canon EOS R5 does it - and saw the amazing results! - but almost 4 large for just the body is a bit way out of my price range...

So for now, I'll just content myself with some grab shots and just messin' around.