The Mojave Module

While passing through California’s Mojave National Preserve in 2018, my partner and I spotted a 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 scale.

A yellow train locomotive numbered 2570 with an American flag and patriotic design, pulling a freight car along a desert landscape with mountains in the background and utility poles in the foreground.
Photo of a dark photography studio with a lit-up screen displaying a landscape scene, supported by two trestle tables, surrounded by studio lighting equipment and cables.

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, focus stacking was used to composite ~10 different shots per final image.

16_COMP_wLIGHTS.png
Hyduk-NScale-Mojave-Module_03.png
Hyduk-NScale-Mojave-Module_04.png

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.

Desert landscape with mountains in the distance, power poles and wires, and a clear blue sky.