Ok, so I got asked by a friend of my father to do some documenting of the first annual Branson Express which is a model train convention.
I have always know that he was into building model trains and huge train layouts but didnt realize he was part of a nation wide club.
So long story short I agree to come out and shoot some video of the event.
I soon realized though that this had the potential to be a really nice documentary, if done correctly.
These people are EXTREMELY passionate about their hobby. And some of the craftsmanship that goes into the pieces is extraordinary.
They make everything as true to life as possible. When they say a scale replica they mean it.
I had two video cameras and I was running around this place interviewing and shooting all day long so I didn’t get very many photos with my Bessa.
Here is a taste of some of the people I met that day.
This is Ted and Marge from Kansas.
This was Marge’s personal layout that she built completely by herself. She said Ted only did the electrical part.
I asked them how they got into model trains. Ted had been into them since child hood but Marge took it up has a type of therapy.
Marge taught artistic roller skating. She explained it as being just like ice skating only with normal roller skates in a roller rink. She had her own skating facility and everything. She had been doing it for 35 years.
One day she had to have an ear operation and through some complications during surgery they messed up her equilibrium. Now she has extreme balance problems. So needless to say she had to quit teaching skating and they even closed up there skating rink.
Ted told me she was in a deep depression for months and one day she decided to help him on his layout. Well, Marge had WAY more ideas than him and started changing it around to fast for his liking, so he brought home a table for her to work on herself.
So now Marge and Ted travel around with their layouts enjoying a hobby they both have learned to love.
I wish I would have taken some stills of there layout to show you. I have lots of footage of it and its so detailed.
This is Scott.
Scott builds custom train cars for people. He LOVES what he does. You can just tell by the way he explains it. Every single piece of the cars he builds he does all by hand. He also “weathers” his own cars and his daughter in law (who wasn’t there) does all the graffiti on the box cars. Now the graffiti is NOT decals. She takes actual digital pictures of trains then blows them up and copies the tags onto the replica cars. It looked so good, it was insane.
His son was also there, who I didnt get a good picture of, but he was just as passionate about them.
This is just a random shot of one of the layouts. Not sure who’s.
Random dudes rummaging.
This dude was for real…
I am now pretty bummed that I didn’t get more shots. I will have to go through some of the footage and see if I can pull some screen grabs.
anyway hope you enjoyed it
even though it was pretty short.
later
