Thalys and Steam!

Hard to believe that its been almost two weeks since my last post! I've been preoccupied with my lighting installation and building construction work that I referred to several posts ago. In between painting and soldering, I've also been running the trains and attempting to capture some 'dramatic' shots of the layout. My goal is to replicate the 'magic' that I saw in the beautiful photos that first captivated me in the 2003 Minitrix catalog!

So whilst carefully avoiding photos of areas of the layout currently under 'renovation', and with a little bit of 'photoshop' magic, here's a couple of photos of the layout from a 'close in' perspective. The above photo obviously shows some harried commuters/passengers on the Kato suburban station platform. Perhaps they are excited to have excited from their Swiss Class 450 Zurich S-Bahn to find themselves at a Japanese suburban station with two German steam locomotives across the platform?!

Below is the Kato Thalys, going through an admittedly fantasy like 'rock cut' (there's not a whole lot of mountains between Amsterdam and Paris as I recall!) as it departs a siding and enters the main line.

Finally, another view of the 'steam meet' between the German Class 44 and Class 3 steam locomotives.