From the earliest days of my working life, at Ian Allan in 1963, photography of models and model-making has been at the centre of what I do. At first, I just watched. The earliest photo session I remember was the cover ‘snow scene’ for the December 1963 Model Railway Constructor. The Wills ‘4F’ 0 ‐ 6‐0 and Bec ‘J17’ were built from whitemetal body kits. The ‘snow’ was one of those powder bathroom cleaners of the time – Vim or Ajax. The office smelled like a public ‘loo’ for weeks afterwards and the locomotives were probably ruined!
Within a year, photographer Colin Gifford had joined the team at Ian Allan and Colin’s influence soon revamped the design of the magazine. That included more bespoke model-making to create cover scenes that were relevant to the content. I built most of the models for them. Each had to be built within four weeks and had to provide the viewpoint which Colin wanted. It could be a night scene with a working signal, or perhaps a silhouette centred on the coupling between a locomotive and coach.