7mm Heybridge Basin

[adrian]

Suggest using a piece of the thinnest shim at hand, and making the tiniest hole by abrading very gently with a disc in a motor tool.

or a piece of 5 or 10 thou n/s or brass sheet. With a rivet embossing tool put a single rivet in the centre and then file back the rivet with a fine flat needle file, sanding block or place fine wet and dry on the workbench and rub the plate or it.

 

[RichardG]

Rather than a camera use a smart mobile phone. I took this on my Samsung smart phone which has Pro camera settings with the lens at HO scale eye level. Smart phones, being thin, have the advantage they can be set almost anywhere on the layout.

View attachment 257399

My own smart phone is a Google Pixel 6a. The phone camera doesn't have pro settings, but it can save its images as RAW files. These are .dng files and amazingly they are compatible with my ancient iMac.


The viewpoint here is a little low, as if the camera is at waist or chest level. Perhaps a reflex camera with a focussing screen on the top. All of the lighting and shadows here are from the lighting rig, I am sure I have got this in just the right place. The trees are out of focus on the backscene, and rendered further out of focus here.


Another slightly low viewpoint, the photographer would be standing on a barge in the basin.


A higher viewpoint, closer to that of a person. The buildings are about 80 mm behind the wagon but look so much further away. The shadows on the chimney stacks align pretty well with those on the wagon.

These three photos are RAW files from the Pixel 6a, with the jpg files for WT created in the iMac. I rather like these photos, I think the colours have a slightly soft appearance.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

The viewpoint here is a little low, as if the camera is at waist or chest level. Perhaps a reflex camera with a focussing screen on the top. All of the lighting and shadows here are from the lighting rig, I am sure I have got this in just the right place. The trees are out of focus on the backscene, and rendered further out of focus here.

The lower viewpoint will be akin to the box and folding cameras tiny 'camera obscura' or prism as a viewfinder which were used at waist level. Later folding cameras had flip up viewfinders which were metal frames and you still had to adjust for parallax errors due the offset of the viewfinder to the lens. The parallax errors disappeared with SLRs and digital rangefinder cameras.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

A bit of post processing in Affinity Photo you can end up with an old photo

 

[oldravendale]

A bit of post processing in Affinity Photo you can end up with an old photo

I spend hours and hours getting rid of problems like that!

Brian

 

[Osgood]

Pics have been 'AI'd back to Victorian era and shown on WT - what happens if you ask AI to modernise that 'old' pic above to 2026?

 

[Osgood]

And colourise the old one!

 

[simond]

I spend hours and hours getting rid of problems like that!

Brian

Can’t you ship them to Richard?

 

[RichardG]

A bit of post processing in Affinity Photo you can end up with an old photo

View attachment 257420

Dave I think this is amazing! Thank you very much.

All of the printed backscene is slightly out of focus. So it is never going to be possible to achieve a wholly sharp image with any lens. Nevertheless, I do think the composition here has a period look to it.

Immediately below the door frame is a rail joiner. This is strip styrene because the moulded ones are too tall for the code 100 rail. I never thought the lack of bolt head detail would ever show, and now it is staring me in the face. Never mind.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Immediately below the door frame is a rail joiner. This is strip styrene because the moulded ones are too tall for the code 100 rail. I never thought the lack of bolt head detail would ever show, and now it is staring me in the face. Never mind.

For the rail joiner just apply four dots of PVA with a sharp cocktail stick or 0.8mm wire and paint when dry. This will give the impression there is something there.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Pics have been 'AI'd back to Victorian era and shown on WT

'AI'd ? 'Dave I'd more like (coincidentally my surname begins with an 'I').

The image was made up of five layers.

• Richard's original photo.
• Two old photograph papers downloaded from the t'interweb.
• Two 'dust and scratches' screens also downloaded from t'interweb.

Processing was 'Dave I'd' using the Affinity Photo editing suite. I use this for cleaning up my own scanned negatives, slides and photos and those I've acquired from my grandfather, father and other family members - and also for making up model station name boards, posters, sign, etc.


In short the image was converted to B&W and the black and white levels altered (reduced) at either end of the spectrum as early film emulsions were not as sensitive as modern film emulsions.

The two old photo papers were copied and pasted into the image and then these layers blended as 'multiply' rather than 'normal' followed by copying and pasting the two 'dust and scratches' layers and blending as 'screen'.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

I spend hours and hours getting rid of problems like that!

Likewise, when I'm processing my own and family inherited negatives, slides and photos.

The only problem is it's quicker to put the dust and scratches back than remove them.

 

[Osgood]

Understood - DAIv'd.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Just thought I'd see what the photo with the buildings in the background would look like. Again - aged using Affinity photo editing suite.

 

[RichardG]

There is something a bit special about the Three Aitch ex-MR box van. The mouldings have a sort of "crafted" look about them. Construction of this one is on my Workbench thread here.


A phone camera photo with different lighting. This time I am using a small LED panel to fill in shadow detail, as well as the layout lighting rig to provide the general illumination.

@Yorkshire Dave I wonder if an old photo version is possible?

 

[magmouse]

One of the things that tends to distinguish B&W digital and film photography is the overall contrast and - in particular - the relationship between different tones. This is a version of Dave's edit that raises the shadows and reduces the contrast across the mid-tones:



Nick.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

I wonder if an old photo version is possible?

Two versions - orthochromatic and panchromatic.

As it's late Victorian/early Edwardian I looked at some old Midland Railway photographs with maroon locomotives and reduced the red channel during the conversion black and white to create an orthochromatic film emulsion effect. As orthochromatic film is insensitive to red, items such as the buffer beams, nameplate background and the loco itself appear almost black.



Panchromatic film being sensitive across the visible light spectrum renders the reds.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

What you need is a general view of the station to create a postcard with the location recorded on the lines of something like this.

 

[RichardG]

Thank you @Yorkshire Dave for hiding so much of the aluminium mesh. This is going to intrude into most photos of the station until I build the basin and let the place live up to its name.


"Heybridge Basin Light Railway Station".

I suspect there is a picture here if I plant out the flower bed. This, like just about everything in 7mm scale, is new territory for me. Maybe I can find some suitable 00/H0 ones.


"The little train at Heybridge Basin".

I ran out of backscene here so there is a dog-earred corner ready-made.


This is a postcard I want to use on a display in front of the fiddle yard. I suppose, if any of the low-level photos from the last few days could be rendered in a similar style, one or two of them could go on the board alongside a map and a description of the layout

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

I suppose, if any of the low-level photos from the last few days could be rendered in a similar style, one or two of them could go on the board alongside a map and a description of the layout

Here you go - Found this old battered postcard recently, apparently the station is still under construction



I looked at a few old postcards to see how they annotated these. In early days they were hand-written and obviously there is no suitable typeface in today's tech world. Therefore I resorted to trying to re-create the hand-written effect.