Dec 22 Scenery in St Joseph Industrial Park
I learned a few things when building the temporary Halloween layout and then the temporary Christmas layout for my father-in-law:
I now have experience with a foam base as the primary base - enabling a nice river cut. I also now have experience painting the back side of plexiglas, to create a sense of water depth. A useful advancement in my backdrop skill may be something different you might be interested in trying - that’s what I’ll focus on.
Shown is the progression from painted plaster cast, to ground foam, to homemade photo backdrop.
Here is how I did it: search online for ‘landscape’ photos, and be sure there’s no license. Copy the selected photo into Excel. Size and crop to your liking. KEY: Flip the photo right-left, and save that separately. Then print, and lay the photos out end to end. Trim and paste to cardboard or paper board etc. One of those cutting wheels and a straight edge as shown are really helpful.
The same end-to-end splicing works on Model Builder buildings by Evans Design that you design and print at home:
Basically that’s the advancement as of today in the St Joe Industrial Park! One more shot of Johnson Controls Battery - the siding is multiple copies of Clever Models ‘O Scale Modern Steel Engine House Blue’ - the engine house sides. The door and dock doors are printed from the Model Builder suite. The staircase and barrels are 3D printed from the files available here on the Forum. The semi trailer is a paper model from Team Track Models. Pallets are Rail-Scale-Models.
As you can see, the upper level (Marceline in this area) is about to go in. There’s plenty of scenery to add below, but our 9yr old great nephew will be here Tuesday so I’m trying to get a loop operational in Marceline in addition to the switching that’s ready here in the industrial park. Merry Christmas!
