The Mojave Module
Back in 2018 while driving through California’s Mojave National Preserve, my partner and I spotted a Union Pacific freight train in the distance. As it crawled towards us we stopped to take it all in—its grumbling engines shaking the sand under our feet.
Years later in the midst of the COVID pandemic while cooped up in my Brooklyn apartment, I decided I wanted to relive that memory so I built and photographed it in miniature at 1:160 (N) scale.
The size of the module is 4ft x 1.5ft. I used an iPhone to photograph it, as the small sensor and lenses are easily placed close to scale-human height into the scene. For a realistic scale depth of field, each final image is a composite of ~7-10 stills, each shot at a different focal distance.
As the culmination of the project, the Mojave Module received a feature in Model Railroader Magazine, the hobby’s leading publication for over 80 years. And with that I officially became, a nerd.