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I'm looking for ideas how to model disappearing streets/roads in an urban setting.  I'm stacking 3 different scales of building flats to create a forced perspective but need ideas how to model street scenes that gradually narrow.  I haven't found of these types of scenes offered by the various companies that make backdrops, except maybe for Scenic-King.  Would love to hear or see your ideas.

Chad

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Hey Chad.....here is what I did in one area of my layout that I had a roadway going nowhere. Unfortunately, it is not an urban setting.

The road crosses under two bridges and then "disappears" into a tunnel portal. I lined the road with trees to further make the scene darker and cut the roadway narrower at the portal. Putting the road and portal on an angle also helps to disguise the fact it goes nowhere. Obviously, the inside of the portal gets painted black.

The trick is to fool the eye to see what is not actually there with good placement of buildings, scenery items, cars, etc.

Hope that helps.

Donald

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Last edited by 3rail

 This area is on a narrow shelf. Where you see the transition in the road is the end of the modeled buildings. It just turned into a blue wall. I bought some flats on eBay. Really had no clue as to what I was doing. I staged everything on my kitchen table with the flats propped up, autos in place, sidewalks and such. Shot some photos.   Tried different placing things at different angles. Finally decided the best way to make the road disappear was to have an intersection. Took what I had to my local Staples and the girl there helped me out as far as getting it sized correctly. Printed it out ona heavy paper. Not great. Better looking than the blank blue wall though.

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Last edited by Dave_C

The California Museum of Science and Industry (now California Science Center) had an O scale diorama layout that was about three feet deep. Here's how they handled roads using forced perspective, using 1:64 cars at the rear. The road at the back of the diorama (left side of the second photo) was a chain-driven highway using Matchbox cars (1:64) moving along at a slow pace. It was a work of art, now long gone.

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Chad, you asked about disappearing streets in an urban setting. I have 5 in a city scene that disappear, the buildings are a mix of flats, full and partial buildings. At one end of the city the road enters a tunnel in a hillside, at two other points the roads disappear behind buildings. Consideration of building placement angles combined with possible viewing points is important to get the result.

 

 

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Last edited by AmFlyer

I've seen for urban modeling the recommendation to have streets run at an angle and deadend to a building, as AMFlyer shows in particular in his last photo.  Dave C has a good photo as well of dead-end into a building.  Running streets at an angle makes them look longer.

I am working on a similar setup but don't have it nearly ready for a photo.  This technique is well discussed in the book "Building City Scenery for your model railroad" by John Pryke if you want to pick up a reference. I've used his book for many good urban modeling ideas.  I've attached a prototype photo I am basing my setup on that shows a real world example. (Boston, across from South Station)
prototype

Whatever you do, please post the photos so we can see the results!

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Last edited by EmpireBuilderDave

Thanks everybody for your suggestions and ideas.  My challenge is the stack of flats I'm using is just exactly that, flat, maybe a 1/4" thick, so in essence the backdrop is 1 dimensional, if that makes sense, so I'm very limited in what I can do.  The only solution I can think of is to find photos of street scenes where the buildings fronting the street gradually narrow or shrink (much like Dave's photo in the latest previous post), and sizing the photo to fit the space dedicated for the street scene that fits between the flats and the 3 dimensional buildings that will be in front of the flats.  The other idea that I've been thinking of doing similar to Donald proposed which is having the street disappear under a bridge railing or tunnel and then add building flats above that railing so it looks like the street disappears into a canyon of buildings beyond the bridge.  I've been searching for such photos online, and have found some that might work with some modification, but I'm not a graphic artist so I'm still searching.  

Again thanks everyone, and I will post photos of my final product.

Chad

 

This is an interesting topic. Great comments and ideas by everyone!

I have a small shelf layout that is 3 feet deep. I use only the front 2 feet for track. The back 1 foot is used for buildings and scenery so that I can give the appearance of depth. Here are two ways I have tried to add disappearing streets.

First is by having the street turn as it approaches the backdrop and then hiding it behind a building. Note that the building where the road approaches the backdrop is a photo glued to the backdrop.

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My second attempt is to continue the road into the backdrop by blending it into the backdrop scene. This is a section that I am obviously still working on. The background is a color photo from the 1950's.

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Also not a city-scape but, I recently completed a back corner with a tunnel through a hill. I tried a mirror first but since it would be forward facing I decided against it. I found an image online that was close to the look of the road I was building and cut it to size and glued it to the back of the portal. The image is recessed about 2" to give some depth.

This is the print, the arch and columns are not visible on the finished product.

2021-02-15 07.28.01

2021-02-26 07.09.05

2021-04-01 08.05.292021-04-01 08.05.43

Bob

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John Allen used a pair of front surface reflecting mirrors joined at q 90 degree angle to reverse the image under a bridge or overpass.  It was an amazing thing to see because I don't understand just how the physics work....but it did work beautifully and only needed a couple of inches from a rear wall or obstruction.



If someone would consider posting the "how to"s and some images I would personally be grateful.

Last edited by Forty Rod

This is an interesting topic. Great comments and ideas by everyone!

I have a small shelf layout that is 3 feet deep. I use only the front 2 feet for track. The back 1 foot is used for buildings and scenery so that I can give the appearance of depth. Here are two ways I have tried to add disappearing streets.

First is by having the street turn as it approaches the backdrop and then hiding it behind a building. Note that the building where the road approaches the backdrop is a photo glued to the backdrop.

My second attempt is to continue the road into the backdrop by blending it into the backdrop scene. This is a section that I am obviously still working on. The background is a color photo from the 1950's.

IMG_3904IMG_3985

That's really nice your "Storage building #2"!

Did you make that from parts of the IHC/Atlas O two stall enginehouse?

Last edited by prrhorseshoecurve

prrhorseshoecurve

Yes, Storage Building #2 is made of spare parts from some old damaged IHC/Atlas O two stall enginehouse kits I picked up at swap meets. It's only purpose is a view block for the backdrop. There is no Storage Building #1. And the little folks on the layout will have to figure out what to store in it.

I got the idea from some photos of old brick buildings on the internet that had painted signs simply saying "storage" or "storage building".

Recent renewed interest in this topic reminded me that I had not posted photos of what I ultimately came up with as promised. So here's the street views I developed. In the 1st photo, where the photo was taken, the depth of the layout is about 4 feet.  I used flats, S and HO scale structures, vehicles and lights and traffic signal to create a vanishing scene and forced perspective. In 2nd photo, the depth is about 10 feet, far in the distance the street goes under a bridge where there's a mirror making it look like the street goes further than it actually does. Of the two, I like the 1st one the best.  What do all think?

Hope you enjoy, Chad

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  • Well, here's a slightly different approach to a "disappearing" road.
  • These three 2014 photos are from the S gauge layout of the late Marty Wik, in the Phoenix AZ area.
  • .       (Sorry, the photos are not too sharp.)

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Image 1 - End of the Road

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Image 2 - The other side of the underpass shown in Image 1

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Image 3 - The underpass -- viewed from further away

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The complete set of layout photos are    H-E-R-E .

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Last edited by James Ingram

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