Have any of you had any luck finding building flats in our scale?
I’ve searched hobby stores and Googled the web high and low, but have yet to find anything in O scale/Ogauge building flats. Nor does there seem to be much in the way of suitable city backdrops, even at backdropwarehouse.com or scenicexpress.com.
What there is seems to be in HO, but I don’t have that much room fon my layout or the forced perspective of that much smaller buildings.
BTW, my particular interest is urban building flats, particularly for multi-story city buildings. Downtown Chicago in particular would be perfect, but I’ll obviously have to take what I can get.
Finally, do any of you have any guidance for me on enlarging color photos (from web sources) into your own backdrops?
I am using very narrow fronts on the entire top layer of teh layout I am building. In teh corners, I am building these at an angle and simulating streets coming out of teh corners to the tracks.
I bought some HO flats and figured an enlargement proportion to scale them up to O. I scanned them and then printed them on large paper - 17x22. 200% is a bit too big - I went with 180%
Here is one:
I mounted this to a piece of black foam core and then cut it out and installed a few gooseneck lamps on it.
Likewise the one on the right in this photo.
I cut the three building apart and then copied additional brick patterns to stagger these in their depth by pasting the additional brick down the side.
This one is made from sections sections of an engine house I bought from Downtown Deco for $42.00.
These is made from several Ameritowne kit fronts:
THis last one is made from a piece of bainbridge (illustratiion) bord scored to fold. THere is a lot of work yet to do on it:
True, but they add up quick. I used one $34.95 Ameritowne kit plus 18 fronts on that factory. Some were $12.95, some were $14.95, I’ve got close to $300.00 in materials in that factory, let alone the wood bracing, paint, lighting and other details. This will probably be close to $500.00 in materials by the time it’s finished and at least 100 hours work.
My local hobby store has a set of the rural paper flats that I might pick up. They are only a couple of bucks, and would make my backgrounds look a little better. Sure beats painting the buildings in. Like Frank, I’d mount them on board to give them some dimensionality. The set I am referring to had a gas station, a mill, a coal station, etc. I intend to keep them HO size to give the illusion of distance.
No, no, Frank. There is nothing to fear. It’s just paint. Wiring a layout is hard. Working on locos is hard. Make a mistake doing either and you could screw up your trains. Making a mistake on a backdrop is not harmful at all. You paint over it and move on.
In my opinion, Ameritowne flats are great. Good selection, great detail, no cleaning-up of “flash”, resonably priced (often found at train shows for $10.), or well-stocked stores.
Bob, ModelRailroader ran an article several month’s ago on how to take your own photo’s and to convert them in to one large back drop the finished flat was very realistc. I will look to see what issue it was.
Mike
