Life-Like Train Set

Sunday, February 26, 2012

The Life-Like Brand -

 Train Set

     This train set has been on my mind to re-photograph for a while. I purchased it last year at the nearest Salvation Army store, and photographed it. I thought that it would immediately sell on E-Bay, but no, it didn't! So today, I decided to take it out of storage and re-photograph it.

    It's not an old set, as it has the new Canadian postal code that was implemented within the last 25 years. I checked up the name "Life-Like Trains" (owned once by the Tyco Company), and discovered that it was purchased in 2005 by the Wm. K. Walthers Company, located in Milwaukee, Michigan in the USA. That appeara to be a large company that sells and I guess makes model trains, so it's good to see that the "Life-Like" brand lives on.

    Getting back to the set of trains (4 in all), I decided to re-photograph them in the more-dramatic lighting that I like to use, even though a lot of current photography, "à la sloppy digital-era photography lighting" is still around-ugh!  By that I mean, flatly-lit, overexposed highlights, no shadow detail, and so on. Fortunately ,excellent photography lighting has been around, and now is coming back stronger!

    What I like about photographing these toys is that there is so much detail to be seen in the train cars. They are plastic, and I have to admit to making 1 huge mistake. I didn't blow the dust off the toys, and they certainly photographed with "tons" of dust on them!

    Another thing that I found interesting was that the previous owner had loaded the interiors of the caboose, the coal train, and the Tuborg train with small nails, called penny nails. I think penny nails were called that because you'd get them  for a penny (a very long time ago). The owner must have doesn't that because the trains, being made of lightweight plastic probably either didn't make good contact with the rail bed, or perhaps flipped over on corners.  The problem I have now is how to get the nails out, in order to reduce their weight when I sell the train set! In 1 case, the owner drilled a tiny hole in the top of the coal pile, and then simply loaded the train with all those nails!

    So for today, I present to you the Life-Like Brand of toy trains. What's interesting is that they are CN, which is stands for "Canadian National". Once owned by the Canadian Government, the railroad was privatized and went public on the stock market. The company has done extremely well on the stock market and as a company, due to smart management.

       I couldn't find the gauge of the train set for all those of you who are train aficionados.  The word "gauge" is similar to the word "scale" when representing the relative size of a toy or set of toys.  As a 1"43, this ratio of number means that the toy is 1 inch  compared with 43 inches of the real item.  Or, you can say that the toy is 1/43 or the real item is 43 times larger than the toy. 

     When you mention "gauge", there are different letters representing different train sizes of toys.

     I just got an answer to a question that I posed previously. I didn't know the gauge of this train set,and the  suggested that I do some reading at Wikipedia.  Anyway that reply got me to look at the box the trains came in, and lo and behold, I had my answer.

This train set is HO. As for the size, it measures 4 1/2" (L) x 1 3/8" (W) x 2" (H) 

or 115mm x 32mm x 50mm. HO gauge is 1:87. 

That means that for every inch of the toy, the real train is 87x as big.

So the real "caboose" is  391.5" x 119.19" x 176" or  32.625' (L) x 9.93' (W) x 14/.66' (H) 

or 9.94M x  3.02M x 4.47M.

The caboose was at the end of the train , and trained railwaymen would watch the train for any problems. The caboose and the respective railwaymen became obsolete and disappeared in the 

mid- 1990's. Electronically monitored railway tracks were introduced and completed throughout Canada at that time.

    

     Here's an interesting story that someone told me about "real trains". I met a friend of my sister-in-law at a party who was from Australia. I'm always very inquisitive and like to ask all kinds of questions when I meet someone new or from a different part of the world. We were talking, and she mentioned an interesting fact about  a train line in Australia. A while ago, 2 different companies from 2 different European and British countries built 2 rail lines. The problem turned out that they both used different gauges of railroad tracks, so a train going in 1 direction could only go so far, whereupon, everyone and everything had to be transferred to the other gauge, and continue on their final destination!

    If you're interested in the lighting, I'm going to be talking about the topic and trains in my other blog today called prophotographylearning.blogspot.com.

Thanks for dropping by, and have a 

great morning, afternoon, or evening,

wherever you may be.