Backscene
A picture, so they say, is worth a thousand words. Chris Leigh’s 750 words or so of Backscene are about pictures, and how they’ve been taken in the past 60 years.
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.