My train room is a nice size of 13 ft 6 in by 17 feet. The problem is that I have a large window at the one end and by large I mean 5 ft wide by 3 feet high. Yes the house is a by level.
I don’t want to permanently cover the wind up because it faces the front street and that would spoil the look of the house. Curb appeal as they say.
Right now, I’m thinking of using a vinyl roller blind that I could lower down, preferably in a sky blue to match my walls. Right that will happen…
Next thought is to paint the inside of the roller blind to match the blue and add the appropriate hills etc to match the rest. The problem there is of course getting paint flexible to not crack and furthermore finding a primer that would allow the paint to stick at all.
Hang some nice curtains in the window, then box it in on the back side, paint your backdrop on the inside of that.
But that’s just me. My wife would give birth to a herd of cattle if I did that upstairs. Fortunately my layout is in the basement. But I did put my backdrop over the one – much smaller – window in it, long before the wedding[8D].
My guess is that a roll-up backdrop is just not going to work. Better to get a big piece of foamboard and paint on it. That way it’s light enough to move, but will be solid and straight, so the paint won’t be chipping off like it would on a roll-up.
I have a couple of 4-foot wide windows in my train room. I decided to just run the scenery and backdrops up to the openings and forget trying to carry the backdrops across. In my opinion, attempts to disguise blinds with paint never look good, and temporary plugs aren’t too much better. Do a nice job on everything around the window and its presence shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
Here’s what I did. You could just keep the blinds closed or get what they call day drapes. They are made out of materials like tool (SP?) or something and let the light in and you can see out through it but can’t really see in. When I visit my friends in Europe they always seem to have something similar to this over the windows even in the day time.
If you install blinds int he window and keep them closed, no one will see the backdrop extending across the window opening.
Thinking crazily, I wonder if you painted the back side (window side) of the backdrop flat black, if it would be also pretty much invisible from the street side, at least when the room lights were off and you weren’t in there working or running trains.
Just paint it, use a color to match the other blinds or other on the front of the house. When dry, paint another coat on the inside to match the layout, get ready to move and 10 min. with a paint scraper and back to normal on the window glass, you will probably have to repaint the train room anyway!
Painting the inside of a roll up shade and having the paint stay is a monumental task I wouldn’t even try. You MIGHT be able to order colored shades at Lowes or Home Depot though!
Get some heavy drapes that are sky blue in color you can close on a drawstring rod and leave it at that.
The room my train layout is in is Sky blue walls, and I have a curtain the same color hanging floor to ceiling in front of one wall to cover up stored items. I was supposed to make curtains for the window {the layout is in fornt of half of the window} to match the curtained wall but ran out of material and never got to buying more. so the cream colored curtain still hanges there over the window and doesn’t bother me!
My backgrounds are on styrene sheet, I think 1/32 thick. I bought 4 x 8 sheets for about $17.50 and cut bthem in thirds lengths wise to make each sheet into 3 8-foot sections 16 inches high. (You could cut them in two for a 24" high background.)
I spray painted with a Krylon primer for that allows other paints and “stuff” to stick, then oil painted so O could blend sky high light blue wioth horizon bluish white, and spray painted clouds, and brush painted distant landforms with acrylics.
My room has 2 windows right in the corners and one almost 4 feet across in front.
I put up a lathe structure to hold my background sections against the walls. (One wall here has old sky painting on walls…)
Removable styrene sheets go over the windows, hanging on alignment and support “pins”. I took digital photos of some PVC pipes I use to make grain elevator silos, printed them at 95% actual size for “perspective” at repeated the pront to make an edge of my removable background that would look like a place where a structure stopped…
And this is with a mockup of 3D modeled portion of the elevator in front of BG…
Removable section in place in front of open staging yard. Splice visible at end, need a little more work there to blend scene.
You certainly CAN paint on a window shade. Photographers use roll up painted backdrops all the time. I had some painted on standard window shades 30 years ago.
You can also get rolls of seamless paper in sky like colors.
If you add a close-color roller shade and raise the scenery or free standing backdrop in front of the window about a foot or more taller than the track, you might notice the window looking across the room, but not not when following trains in the immediate area.
I found a Thomas the Tank Engine roller blind to cover my window. It’s plain blue on the back.
As you can see I fixed my backdrop between the layout and the window. Works well and I can roll the blind up when I need extra light or to open the window.
When I took over an 11x15 room for the layout, I bought some custom small slat metal blinds in a sky blue color. My backdrop is painted over the window sill and surrounding area and fortunately the bottom of the window blinds is about a foot above the layout level.
If your window goes below the layout level, I would by the blinds and close them and paint the backdrop right on the blinds. You would be surprised how they just blend in over time and you don’t notice it.
Thank you one and all for you suggestions. A friend of mine who is a retired sign writer suggested that I use a product used in sign shops called Coroplast which is basically a plastic version of corrugated cardboard about 1/4 inch thick. It was originally designed for use in sign shops for making real estate signs, election signs etc. It takes paint really well.
He even volunteered to do the backdrop all the way around the room for me… Gotta love friends like that!
I’ve got a window too, and I make little attempt to disguise it. I have to keep it accessible, because that’s where I hang the “window rattler” A/C unit to make railroading even possible during the summer.
To mask it off for photography, I simply pull down the light gray room darkening shade… see the upper deck on the shot above. It provides a nice neutral background, and blocks the outdoor light. The lower deck shows the advantage of letting in some light, giving me a nice section of natural lighting for the occasional glamour shot…
I made removable masonite panels that allow window access. They are visible in this photo after the bacdrop was painted. They pop in and out easily, and the seams are not that distracting.
I have a 70" window in my layout room. Since my backdrop is 18" high on my N scale layout I built a simple 18 x 70 frame (with cross pieces) out of light 1x2 lumber. I then glued (liquid nails) my .060 styrene backdrop material to the frame. I installed brass locking hardware at each corner (looks like the bolt of a rifle) so that I could easily remove the frame if I ever needed to. I waited to paint my backdrop until this piece was finished and installed so it would be uniform. The window already had a ventian blind installed so I left it in to block out light above my backdrop. Has worked well for me.
Having a window behind my layout worked as a benefit in the long run as I am able to open it up and clean my strange helix from the outside. It’s only 2 feet or so of 3 levels but is imposible to reach from either of my 1st level manholes reaching up. Belive it or not, I planned on the window being there for this reason. The top level has a back drop and I really don’t notice the blinds at all anymore. But I’m not married so I don’t care. Be well, scookam.
At the end of my layout room is a window where I hung a 40 inch long Masonite pannel on two 1/8 inch dia pins. The Pannel can easly be removed for more light when not running trains. I painted the masonite with a mountain backdrop seen below.
