Photoback Drops and Scenery

Up until now all the photo backdrops that I've done have been experimental.  After looking over several series of photos that I took back in the Fall, I chose some that would work at the south end of the yard where the wall is very close to the yard ladder.  This is also where the wall juts out around the utility chase.  Because the wall is so close to the foreground, the perspective had to work well.  The above photo shows the finished background and how it blends into the foreground trees and ground cover.  Compare this scene to the one in my previous post.  The Chapel Lumber building is sited in the same location, but looks completely different with the backdrop and surrounding foliage.  

Here's a view looking the other way.  Compare this view with the one from my March 18th post.  It's essentially the same view.  In the above view you can hardly tell where the reverse curve is along the background wall.  The tree cover helps hide the location where the wall juts out.

Here's a close up of the tree cover in front of the backdrop.  All of my trees are made from natural plant materials found locally or in my garden.  From left to right, the first tree is made from a sea lavender armature covered with stretched fiber foliage material.  The bare trees are from a boxwood shrub that had some bad winter damage and lost all its leaves.  The low shrubs are dried sedum that turns a reddish brown color in late Fall.  The yellow trees are from a house plant called dwarf cypress.  The plant is bright green when healthy but turns golden yellow when it dies. My wife was upset when we lost the plant and set it in the garage for me to dispose of.  After a couple of weeks of sitting there (sometimes I'm glad that I procrastinate) I noticed that the foliage turned a golden yellow color and I knew it would make nice material for a Fall tree.  The spiky branches were gathered into a tree shape and wrapped with florist tape at the base.  Some yellow ground foam was sprinkled over it and was held nicely by the spiky branches.  The large tree on the right was also made by gathering sedum plant stalks and taping them again with florist tape into a tree shape.  The tree was then covered with the reddish brown fiber foliage material.  Woodland Scenics green clump foliage material was used to make the short evergreens and low ground cover.  The floor of the forest was covered with ground up oak leaves that were processed in a blender.

This photo shows a close up of the finished weather track.  It clearly shows the variations in the ties that were being painted in the previous post, and the use of powdered weathering material to create the rusty appearance on the rails and tie plates.  This is the process that Mike Confalone uses in his "Scenery Outside the Box" DVD series available from Model Railroad Hobbyist's on-line store: http://store.mrhmag.com/index.html  I highly recommend it.

More Work on the South End

Since my last post I painted the curved backdrop corner, completed the Chapel Lumber Spur and finished the ground contours in this area.  Before I place the ground cover, the next step is to paint the track and weather the ties before spreading the ballast.  This is a time consuming process but well worth the effort.  

My trackwork is a combination of flex-track and hand laid turnouts on pre-stained wood ties.  The turnouts look great as built and could be considered finished, but they join section of flex-track that look like, well "flex-track."  I could have just painted and weathered the flex track, but since I want it to all look homogeneous, I decided to weather it so that it looks like it's all part of the same track structure.

For track weathering I once again turned to the scenery Guru, Mike Confalone, whose process is quite realistic.  Mike spray paints all of his trackwork with a base coat of dark brown paint.  He uses Krylon brown Camouflage paint applied from a spray can.  That makes easy work of covering a lot of track very quickly.  For me, I used the same principle only I use thinned brown acrylic paint that I applied with my airbrush simply to avoid the paint fumes.  Same result, different method.

Next I used Mike's process of weathering individual ties using diluted washes of lighter colored acrylic paints.  This is a very effective means of making plastic ties look like the real deal.  The above photograph shows some of the flex-track ties weathered in this manner.  The results are instantaneous and will look even better once the ballast is applied and the rail is weathered with weathering powders.  

As I mentioned above, the individual ties are painted in a random manner with varying shades of gray and yellow washes of acrylic paint.  There is no right or wrong here as long as you maintain the randomness of painting the ties varying shades of the base colors.  I use a piece of card stock as a pallet and mix shades of colors together and add some water to the brush to make a thin wash.  Occasionally, I'll paint a tie a dark gray color to represent a new tie.  The first 3 tracks in the photo have had their ties weathered and it's starting to look like a yard ladder.

I also started building the structure that makes up Chapel Lumber Yard.  It will be a series of buildings featuring two connected warehouses adjoining an office/showroom building.  My version is more representational than accurate, but should help capture the feel of the original structure.