'THE STAMPEDE': Fun With Job Lot Finds and Playing With My Western Toys - Pt 1

Wellll, maybe 'playing' isn't entirely accurate but it's the kind of play adult hobbyists morph into. I'm not on the living room floor setting up my figures and yelling, "Pow, pow, you're dead" and knocking over little Cowboys like when I was a kid, but putting them into settings like this and taking pictures is still fun. It started after my first round of sorting through the job lots I blogged about the other day and came across this bunch of horses by REL (along with a lone REL wagon driver)

So I'm thinking "What the heck am I gonna do with all these horses with no wagons for them to pull?" Then a bit of my family's past history came to mind when I remembered a story my dad used to tell about the days when he rode the rails as a hobo w-a-y back in 1918-21(ish). He used to tell us a story about how he "saved a town from a stampede" (his words) somewhere in South Dakota I believe. He could never remember the name of the town and he never elaborated on just how he went about 'saving a town' - but it was a fun story from my dad's past to listen to. The bottom line is, my next photo op was answered - STAMPEDE! I could use all of these horses to mimic a stampede.

While I do have an Amazon photo studio - it's really only suitable for small toys - I just don't have enough free space out in The Cave for elaborate set-ups...

...but I do have a washing machine and dryer whose tops can be used to set up some minimal displays. Time to get out all the stuff for a photo shoot:

-a scenicked display base which I've used for numerous other photo shoots

32" (81.3cm) x 25" (63.5cm)

-a backdrop that was part of a diorama (the diorama board was disposed of years ago)

 -a sheet of foamcore

-a hill that was saved from an old train layout and used from time to time in my shoots

-MPC buildings and ringhand figures

-Marx fence pieces

-last but not least, nearly all of the REL horses and the wagon driver

Enjoy! Opa Fritz