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Easier than you once thought! Convincing backdrops and ....Scratchbuilding General discussion
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Regular poster 204 posts Joey_Ricard Regular poster 204 posts
Joey_Ricard

 

I talk to a lot of model railroads about a lot of subjects and two subjects always seem to come up.
 
One is the lack of commercial convincing backdrops at a reasonable price. Now, sure - your definition of reasonable may differ from mine and I am a photographer that relies on printing. Add to that the non availability and sometimes escalated pricing of something generated for "1:48" or "O" scale. Add even more to that for a super large print. For these reasons, I choose to create my own backdrops. Anyone with decent camera and moderate computer skills can do it.
 
The other thing is scratch building. "I find" that many people are afraid to jump into structure building, but as those that scratch build as I do can attest, it's a lot easier than you think. If you can build benchwork, you can scratch build a structure - it's that simple. 
 
Attached are two quick "HOW I DO IT" photos, but they are not tutorials. There are plenty of people out there doing good tutorials and there are many of ways to do backdrops and scratchbuild structures. This is just the way I do it and surely, it's not the only way or what some may see as the "right way". If it looks convincing on the layout and in photos - then it is a "convincing" way.
 
I wish I had time to do a "my way" tutorial, but time is tight as they say. I hope that some reading this will at least find it interesting and take the sting out of the backdrop and scratchbuilding fear and try it.
 
If the text is hard to read because of the forum re-size, feel free to right click and save. It's hosted on my website.
 
Have a great weekend!
 
 
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                    Joey Ricard - West Virginia, USA

          My Model Railroad Blog  ----   My YouTube Channel

 

 

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Ken Glover kfglover Super User 1,506 posts
Ken Glover kfglover

One question

Where is the link to your web site?

Ken Glover,

HO, Digitrax, Soundtraxx PTB-100, JMRI (LocoBuffer-USB), ProtoThrottle (WiThrottle server)

View My Blog

20Pic(1).jpg
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Joey_Ricard Regular poster 204 posts
Joey_Ricard

Ken, I keep these particular

Ken, I keep these particular photos on my photography website behind the scenes, in other words - I store my images there just because I have the space and can link them to these forums. I do have a facebook page where I keep my model railroad blog and lots of images and video. Link is below in my signature or  https://www.facebook.com/sprucemodel

                    Joey Ricard - West Virginia, USA

          My Model Railroad Blog  ----   My YouTube Channel

 

 

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Reply 0
Rustman Frequent poster 681 posts
Rustman

Right Click...

Right click and select open image in new tab/window. This will give you the above tutorial in the larger format, and if that's still not enough use your browsers magnify/zoom feature to get it even bigger.

Matt

Matt

"Well there's your problem! It's broke."

http://thehoboproletariat.blogspot.com/

 
Reply 0
Ken Glover kfglover Super User 1,506 posts
Ken Glover kfglover

When I first saw this...

...it was not displaying the whole "tutorial" (running off the page on the right) or indicating there was a link. Now I see the whole image and it is the link.

Ken Glover,

HO, Digitrax, Soundtraxx PTB-100, JMRI (LocoBuffer-USB), ProtoThrottle (WiThrottle server)

View My Blog

20Pic(1).jpg
Reply 0
Joey_Ricard Regular poster 204 posts
Joey_Ricard

Columns

Ha Ken, yeah, I can resize regular photos that I post to fit in the allowed width, but when I resized these with text - it was too hard to read and I left it alone.

                    Joey Ricard - West Virginia, USA

          My Model Railroad Blog  ----   My YouTube Channel

 

 

.
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