Backscenes

[jhb171achill]

A query....

I remember seeing a description somewhere of a layout which struck me as having quite exceptionally realistic scenery. I think it was in a report of some exhibition in England.

The owner / maker of it was asked about his backscenes, which blended perfectly with his 3D scenery on the layout and he mentioned that he had the scenes actually photographed of a particular location where his layout was set, and there was someone who could take the images and print them out as 00 scale backscenes.

Does anyone here have any thoughts on this? I can't help feeling it would be expensive and barely worth the trouble for general open countryside - but I would be interested in any information if anyone has it.

[johnfromoz]

Hi Jonathan, I can see the benefits of a bespoke (and expensive) approach of using photos etc,  but think there are many off the shelf options these days.  TG we have moved on from the early Peco offerings.

I have just bought the 'Harvest Hills' backscene from ID backscenes which provides (for me) a suitable Irish rolling hills scene for my early stage Irish layout, yet to be started!! 12 quid from Hattons   Each to their own of course...

John

[murphaph]

I like the pale blue sky with wispy clouds approach. I've been watching a few YouTube clips on how to airbrush clouds. It looks easy (he said).

[Galteemore]

Various schools of thought JB. A backscene is not actually meant to draw the eye - as its name implies, it’s only there to set the scene,  so is not meant to be too detailed, otherwise you look at it before the model!  As Phil says above, a suggestion of sky might even be enough. What you are actually trying to do is make the brain ignore the surroundings of the layout - ie the room, walls etc, and focus on the model. Barry Norman has a simple technique in his book involving graduated bands of blues greens and browns which worked for me….

[DJ Dangerous]

Sure why bother with clouds?

All you need is a nice winter blue like this morning:

 

 

[murphaph]

It's an interesting topic. I grew up looking out my bedroom window at the Dublin mountains. In reality from more than few miles away, they are not in sharp focus. They're blurry more often than not. The light refracts as it passes through different air densities, creating a blur, rather than clearly defined features. A back scene representing a distant range of hills mountains should therefore have this blurry quality. Most Irish themed layouts should be like this imo. Unless you're modelling Bray Head or something.

[jhb171achill]

Ideally I’d like a bleak western landscape with turf bog and very distant mountains, but the ID ones look good, as do a couple of other manufacturers. Peco have just unveiled a nice photo one.

[murphaph]

I'm trying to work out an elegant way to have an infinite, curving sky in a shelf "shadow box" layout, but the corners of the room are problematic in my mind, as the curve would need to be in two axes, and hardboard etc. simply won't bend like that. The curves in the corners of my room will be fairly large radius, like 3' or so, but not so large that you'd be able to add a curve in the second axis. There's only so much work you can ask filler to do lol. 

[murphaph]

This guy ended up giving up on the corners when he faced the same problem :

https://markpaulson.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/curving-the-sky/

[murrayec]

@jhb171achill I can recommend a book if you would like to do a bit of research! It's an extensive look at all types of backscene fabrication that one would need;-

Creating A Backscene. A Railway Modelling Companion. by Paul Bambrick & John Ellis-Cockell. Ian Allan Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7110-3842-4

Eoin

[WRENNEIRE]

We are having photos of Ballyglunin printed onto adhesive backing paper for our new "Castletown" layout
One of our members has organised it , he previously did one for our O Gauge end to end layout , the name of which eludes me at the moment
They are excellent and I could not recommend them highly enough

[Broithe]

21 minutes ago, murphaph said:

I'm trying to work out an elegant way to have an infinite, curving sky in a shelf "shadow box" layout, but the corners of the room are problematic in my mind, as the curve would need to be in two axes, and hardboard etc. simply won't bend like that. The curves in the corners of my room will be fairly large radius, like 3' or so, but not so large that you'd be able to add a curve in the second axis. There's only so much work you can ask filler to do lol. 

Someone gave me a large Perspex sphere years ago - about 700mm diameter - it's from an ornamental street lamp.

It looked 'useful', but I've never really found a use for it - it gets used as a cloche, mostly, when it isn't blowing around the place.

Something like that could be chopped up to form 3D corners?

 

[Billycan]

12 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

A query....

I remember seeing a description somewhere of a layout which struck me as having quite exceptionally realistic scenery. I think it was in a report of some exhibition in England.

The owner / maker of it was asked about his backscenes, which blended perfectly with his 3D scenery on the layout and he mentioned that he had the scenes actually photographed of a particular location where his layout was set, and there was someone who could take the images and print them out as 00 scale backscenes.

Does anyone here have any thoughts on this? I can't help feeling it would be expensive and barely worth the trouble for general open countryside - but I would be interested in any information if anyone has it.

JB, I haven't considered anything like a landscape scene for WR&A but I have a little experience with buildings.  So, this is a tuppence worth that might help kickstart some more discussion.  For the cottages at Erne Terrace I photographed each cottage front on from about 10ft, imported into software, and edited.  That involved resizing to 20ft wide x 9ft high and making a perspective adjustment to the vertical sides to remove their vanishing point.  The important thing was that I knew the size was 20ft x 9ft when printed out.  It's a very slow process but has worked well for the buildings.  I'm sure others have done similar.  Now, it occurs to me that if you had a front on photo of some scene you wanted and that view had say a fence with posts at 4ft-6in centres x 4ft high right at the front (or a gate, or a car, or a signal cabin?) then you could use known dimensions to scale the photo to OO scale when printed.  It seems to me that such a photo is already scaled, so getting the front fence right would automatically get a mountain background to the correct appearance.  If that fence is now the boundary between the modelled layout and the backscene then it should look reasonably good.  I know this is simplistic and is not mathematically accurate but if it looks right...  etc etc.  Trees and shrubbery would help to blend the two where they join.  This approach might daft for a backscene but I don't know of anyone who does this type of bespoke scene commercially so I too would be interested in any observations that other modellers would have.

[Galteemore]

35 minutes ago, murrayec said:

@jhb171achill I can recommend a book if you would like to do a bit of research! It's an extensive look at all types of backscene fabrication that one would need;-

Creating A Backscene. A Railway Modelling Companion. by Paul Bambrick & John Ellis-Cockell. Ian Allan Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7110-3842-4

Eoin

Thanks Eoin. Just ordered one….

[murphaph]

34 minutes ago, Broithe said:

Someone gave me a large Perspex sphere years ago - about 700mm diameter - it's from an ornamental street lamp.

It looked 'useful', but I've never really found a use for it - it gets used as a cloche, mostly, when it isn't blowing around the place.

Something like that could be chopped up to form 3D corners?

 

That's a very nice idea. In my particular use case I'd need to source one with a radius of about 1m (because my hidden spiral track determines the minimum radius of the back scene as the spiral is to be behind the back scene). I may try to see can I round those curves with a smaller radius. I think the short wheel base and bogie stock would be fine with a slightly shorter wheelbase but I would some day like to run an 800 class. I'm sure such things are made for other purposes like play grounds and whatnot. I'll have to keep my eyes open.

[jhb171achill]

Many thanks to all above for those valuable suggestions. The corners are actually an issue I hadn't thought of. Mine will need to go all round an L-shaped area so will have four corners to negotiate.

[Broithe]

1 hour ago, murphaph said:

That's a very nice idea. In my particular use case I'd need to source one with a radius of about 1m (because my hidden spiral track determines the minimum radius of the back scene as the spiral is to be behind the back scene). I may try to see can I round those curves with a smaller radius. I think the short wheel base and bogie stock would be fine with a slightly shorter wheelbase but I would some day like to run an 800 class. I'm sure such things are made for other purposes like play grounds and whatnot. I'll have to keep my eyes open.

There could well be other similar items which could be repurposed - blow-moulded spherical tanks, etc.

You wouldn't require transparency.

It's a matter of keeping your eyes open.

[murphaph]

1 hour ago, Galteemore said:

Thanks Eoin. Just ordered one….

Me too. It looks like exactly the kind of book I'll need. Top tip.

[murphaph]

I'm wondering could I make parallel cuts into the upper third or half of the hardboard or 2mm MDF to allow an overlapping bend and then apply filler and smooth down. I think the "infinite sky" effect is worth a lot of effort to be honest.

[Broithe]

7 minutes ago, murphaph said:

I'm wondering could I make parallel cuts into the upper third or half of the hardboard or 2mm MDF to allow an overlapping bend and then apply filler and smooth down. I think the "infinite sky" effect is worth a lot of effort to be honest.

That seems a plausible approach - but, it might take a bit of 'development'.

Or, you could remove "wedges" and form the spherical surface in the manner of a carvel-built boat?

[DartStation]

2 hours ago, Broithe said:

Someone gave me a large Perspex sphere years ago - about 700mm diameter - it's from an ornamental street lamp.

It looked 'useful', but I've never really found a use for it - it gets used as a cloche, mostly, when it isn't blowing around the place.

Something like that could be chopped up to form 3D corners?

 

Have those logs grown or sprouted in the greenhouse since you placed them there!!!!!!! 

[murrayec]

 

[Broithe]

44 minutes ago, Broithe said:

That seems a plausible approach - but, it might take a bit of 'development'.

Or, you could remove "wedges" and form the spherical surface in the manner of a carvel-built boat?

This is the sort of thing I had in mind.

You wouldn't have to achieve an accurate spherical shape, just a smooth transition between the three planes in each corner.

28 minutes ago, DartStation said:

Have those logs grown or sprouted in the greenhouse since you placed them there!!!!!!! 

I stuck them in there to dry them and keep them dry.

They would almost light just by banging them together...

Edited December 22, 2021 by Broithe

[murphaph]

By doing a google image search on that image Broithe, I found the following page which explains the maths behind it. It's an approximate method but for this application more than accurate enough I would have thought! That's really useful, thanks.

https://www.themathdoctors.org/making-a-sphere-from-flat-material/

That should in theory be doable in hardboard or thin MDF. 

The curved sky approach has a very practical benefit for me too. I can set my scenery on the shelf above, forward of the back scene by the width of a hand so that I can get in to re-rail a derailed train on the hidden spiral. That would be much more difficult if the sky was flat to the Y plane and the back scene would likely need to be removable to rescue the train that will some day need rescuing, no matter how well I manage to build the track work.

[Broithe]

1 hour ago, murphaph said:

By doing a google image search on that image Broithe, I found the following page which explains the maths behind it. It's an approximate method but for this application more than accurate enough I would have thought! That's really useful, thanks.

https://www.themathdoctors.org/making-a-sphere-from-flat-material/

That should in theory be doable in hardboard or thin MDF. 

The curved sky approach has a very practical benefit for me too. I can set my scenery on the shelf above, forward of the back scene by the width of a hand so that I can get in to re-rail a derailed train on the hidden spiral. That would be much more difficult if the sky was flat to the Y plane and the back scene would likely need to be removable to rescue the train that will some day need rescuing, no matter how well I manage to build the track work.

Yeah, that's it - I didn't want to inflict the maths aspect onto a (potentially?) innocent person.

It's the basis of the 'orange peel' whole globe maps that we used to see a lot years ago - avoiding the shape/area distortions of the landmasses that Mercator would create much north of here...

 

You only need to to be very approximate, in terms of surface shape - the smoothness is the main issue.

 

I did a layout for an old boy years ago - it had a 'corner in the sky' at one end, but we bent a sheet of hardboard for a one-foot-radius at the other end and the effect was far superior.

Just 2D, but well worth the slight effort.

[jhb171achill]

Absolutely superb info. Hadn’t thought of this spherical approach - was thinking of putting buildings or trees in corners to hide the sharp right angle. Any thoughts on that?

[David Holman]

For what it's worth, check out photos in my Fintonagh thread JB. I've used a mixture of 3D, low relief, 'flats', view blocker (like trees), plus side wings of the fascia - all to draw the eyes away from what you don't want them to see. On Northport Quay am using a curved backscene (hardboard) at one end to avoid a sharp corner, but the other corner will be hidden by a combination of a warehouse and a crane. For me it is all about studying different scenarios and working out what might work best. 

 Another book well worth having is Cameo Layouts by Iain Rice, which examines the whole concept of creating well balanced scenes from start to finish and builds on some of his earlier work. For example a well balanced scene has either a high feature at each end, with low features in the middle, or vice versa. On a larger layout, there might be several of these.

 Options for making curved backscene include mounting board, cardboard and mdf. You can get the latter down to 2mm thick (picture framers use it), while DIY stores sell 4mm mdf that has parallel lines milled on one side to enable it to be curved down to about 15cm radius.

 As for backscenes, I agree with Galteemore. Subtlety is the key and while photographs can look impressive, they can also dominate, not always a good thing when you want the focus to be on the foreground. Indeed if the normal viewing angle is fairly low, then a plain sky is all you need, with maybe a suggestion of low hills on the horizon. Really not difficult to paint - though it is essential to keep colours well muted. The usual advice is to avoid black and primary colours completely, instead using washes of various browns and greens. As for sky, an even pale grey is not the worst, or hardest thing to do. Round here that's all we've had for much of the year!

[murphaph]

Good post David. From my upstairs window here in Brandenburg looking out I see trees, neighbouring houses and directly above all that a grey sky and nothing else. It's entirely prototypical to have the sky completely dominate the backscene. In fact the terrain is so flat around here that even rolling hills would look odd. 

[Northroader]

I think a basic need is not to have the scenic background having a right angle in the corners where the back of the scenic section meets the ends of the section. I generally cut the baseboard to a curve of about 4” radius at the corner, and fit the scenery round this. I have tried making the back to fit a half ellipse, but this is wasteful of useful corner space. The actual backscene, printed or painted, needs support, and I do this with a 3mm hardboard sheet. At the curved corner you can curve the support to fit round the corner if you give the hardboard a prolonged soaking, then hold it to the required form and let it dry out. The other thing to watch is if the scenery has a straight horizon, to break it up with trees, buildings, or hills at the corner, or it does look odd.