I am building a farm themed layout and this is my first layout that wasn’t a grass mat with some EZ track. Can you kind folks give me suggestions to enhance the scenes even more. I already have wind turbines, tractors, and corn stalks on order. I’m aware the backdrop is not the greatest so I may just make it mostly clouds. I also plan on building a road and ballasting my flex track, but I’m looking for things that will make this look more realistic. Here are some pics:
Looks great!!! [Y]My only suggestion is that it looks like is could use some roads and/or paths for the tractors to use to get around.
Hope this is what you needed.
sfb
Yeah, it looks good.
Some roads and paths would help a lot…with vehicles.
And some Agriculture/RR buildings, but I don’t know anything about those. At the loading facilities.
Maybe the corner of a small community.
Looks like fun,
It looks pretty good already. Once you ballast the track, I think you will feel even better about the realism of the scene. You are further along than you think you are.
Rich
Ditto. Thats a good way to put it. Your scenery is further along than mine, which only has a small portion painted green[:-^]
[swg]
sfb
Mentally shrink yourself down and think what is needed to live there. For instance, there is a house but no car, road to the house, junk in the yard, etc. Such details bring things to life.
Not a whole heck of a lot is required; just some mundane things to make it “real”.
BTW the layout looks great. Do I see alien crop circles in one of the fields?
Love the crop circles. Now you need to hang a space ship on the ceiling right above the crop circles and dont mention it to any visitors and see if they put the 2 + 2 together.
THings around the house like milk cans, roads, tractors, gravel around the house, maybe a flower garden. A bridge over the rails would be used if it is a busy main line or a fence and gate if it is not busy. Dont forget the family pets and chicken pens too!!
Massey
Layout looks good. Just needs some building etc. For the backdrop I have pics of Amish farmland at Strasburg railroad that you could download. The pics are overlaped so they can be stitched together to make a panarama. Then just bring it to a sign shop to get printed to the size you want. If you use them download the large file sized versions.
http://s284.photobucket.com/albums/ll17/hamltnblue/Trains/Strasburg%20RR/
I think you have the 300’ rule down pat! Those fields look terrific!
I have seen one in the walthers flyer[(-D]
sfb
I think what you’ve done so far looks very nice. The river is especially well done.
I do have a nit, though. It’s VERY flat – even with a couple of those bumps in there (balls of newspaper covered with plaster cloth, perhaps?). Your backdrop suggests some fairly sizable hills, at least at one end. I know this is kind of a “rip up and redo”, but a little more undulation in your terrain would add greatly to the effect. In the Northeast, even farmer’s fields aren’t flat (not even close, usually).
The other potential issue I see is that your entire layout seems to be devoted to farm – a single one, even. This will limit the kinds of operations you can perform, unless your intent is simply to have trains run through the farmland on their way to and from off-layout locations.