from the eyes of a visiting photographer

You can look at your layout a thousand times, and you see it through your eyes a thousand times. There's nothing like a visiting photographer to give you a different perspective. Here are some shots taken recently by a new visitor to the layout, Hajime Hosokawa, showing some angles and perspectives I don't usually "see." His entry in the visitor logbook reads "This place is an artistic masterpiece!", but I think perhaps his photos are the masterpiece. In any event, it's amazing what you can see through someone else's eyes:

This U-boat is one of the best locos on the railroad. Made by Rivarossi about 5 years ago, it has great detail, including roller bearings in the trucks that rotate as the engine moves. It would never occur to me to take a picture of it on this plain shelf with the sky backdrop behind it. And you would never guess it is part of a 4-engine consist pulling a 32+ car train. Here it comes! You can practically hear the horsepower!

The slight over-exposure of this photo evokes a hot summer day, with this double-header climbing towards Vail Jct. on my fictitious D&RGW extension to Everett, WA. The locomotive is by Blackstone, and the cast rocks were done years ago by Eric Vannice. My son Robin and I painted the backdrop around 2004. Who cares about the black-painted bare plywood under the tender?! Let's call it a bridge!

This is a new take on a photo I usually take at a different angle, lined up with the mainline through Delta yard. It shows our double-header having passed Vail Jct., with some narrow gage hoppers at the Cascade Copper Company waiting to be hauled out, two legs of Delta Wye, and the steel trestle on the standard gage mainline heading up towards Skykomish in the foreground. In the far distance on the left is Legotown/Harbor Island on the bottom, Interbay/Balmer yard in the middle, and Bellingham staging on the top.

You don't notice details until you notice them. Here are a couple of rock climbers working on a disguised pillar in the middle of the room. These rocks are just extruded styrene foam carved with a rasp, covered with white latex house paint and then some acrylic stains. Not as good as cast plaster, but it'll do "for now".

Here's a couple of railfans admiring the passing Thrall-door lumber car near the Samish river crossing north of Burlington, WA.

This scene (near the freight station in Everett) is a tribute to the many hours I spent getting rid of my mom's household goods when she needed to downsize and move into a nursing home. I still have two old antique chest of drawers, if you're interested (prototype dimensions only).

The Interbay Car Repair Facility is a favorite railfanning spot on the prototype, and this unfinished scene hints at its potential for a modeling subject. The blue crane suffered a fall to the floor, so it needs repair, too. I have no idea what the fire truck is doing in there.

I usually take this shot from a lower angle, but now that we have drones I suppose it works. The overpass is Dravus St., and the train moving through Interbay on the "A track" is the same 32+ car train that was being pulled by the U-boat back in the beginning of this post. In the upper right hand corner are the buildings in downtown Seattle. It looks like there was a collision on the Dravus St. overpass I'd better go look into...