I’ve been working (on the railroad…) Wait, that’s not entirely true. I have, however, been working on the room that my railroad will go in. We had an unfinished space in the basement that I’ve been finishing over the past few months.
Now that there are actually walls in the room - and primer on the walls - I’ve come to something of a conundrum: What color should I paint the walls?
And with that, I pose the following questions:
Did you paint your train room or did you just go with a backdrop?
If you painted it, what color(s) did you go with?
If you went with the backdrop option, did you go with one theme or mix and match?
I am in the same boat your are in right now. I finished off the back half of my basement about 9 years ago and painted the walls a sky blue where the layout is. My workshop and staging areas were painted an off-white color. Last year I had a revelation: my current layout lacked plausibility and I didn’t think it would work operationally, either. So I did some research on my prototype, and designed a new track plan that will work much better than the current one. So now I am in the process of finishing off the front half of the basement for the newer, better layout. But I had to compromise a bit. I have two young boys, and many of their toys will be in the newly finished area. My wife told me I could build along the walls of the new area once the boys were older and didn’t need the toy room anymore. So, I am painting the walls in the new area the same off-white color now with the intention of painting them sky blue in the future. I plan on painting a simple backdrop directly on to the drywall once I get that far.
I took a room in our house that became the designated train room only. It is 15’ x 24’. I took everything out of it including the Grand Piano and made it clear to all that they had better not use it for putting their junk in. That being said I painted it and removed the oak mantel from above the fireplace. The layout is freestanding and though not portable, it is movable. I let the wife choose the paint and got to work.
I have a 2’ high backdrop that can be quickly removed when the time comes and my largest table is 18’ x 6’. That will fit nicely in to a 5 ton truck when the time comes.
My only issue is, the paint my wife chose is pink. She said it was to match the very expensive pink carpet that the previous owners had installed. I didn’t know it was pink. I thought it was gray, and I thought the carpet was gray. It wasn’t until long after the layout was in that I was informed the paint and carpet were pink. Oh well it still looks gray to me.[(-D]
Anyway I just thought if the room was ready to go when it came time to move it would be better for all. So a free standing layout and a paint/carpet combo that any woman would be happy with is where I am at.
At least the walls don’t clash with all that pink foam.[:-^]
My train room and lighting valance are painted with Behr brand 540C-2 Serene Sky. A blog post about it is here. This color best matches summer sky as viewed through the train room windows with the room and layout lit with 5000K CFLs and 6500K LEDs. Post about the lighting system are here.
Some areas will have photo backdrops, other areas not. The sky part of the backdrops will be cut away. I am not a big fan of painted on clouds mostly because I am not skilled enough to make them look real. Very few times have I ever seen realistic painted on clouds. My layout will be on a cloudless day.
I’ve gone with a rather interesting combination. The basic room color is a billiard green with white trim. Mainly because this was the office before it became the combination train and wife’s junk room (why do they have so much junk??). I painted a section about two fee high above the layout a sky blue to even with the top of the windows & doors with a vague suggestion of trees or hills or something along the bottom few inches. I’m not talented enough to do a detailed backdrop so I went for the suggestion of something there.
Above the blue sky I added a crown molding to trim out the walls and frame the layout. Then all benchwork is a dark leather brown. All in all it kind of works in a classic turn of the century style which supports a train theme.
I had to “finish out” my train room as well. Following the wall and ceiling surface finishing, the first layout-specific work I did was to paint the walls from ceiling-line to bench work-line in a top down, blue-fading-to-white. This technique is pretty easy to do and has been discussed in MR several times. It is much easier to do this now, before starting the bench work.
Because you want the white part of the sky at the lower part of the visible horizon line, its best to have a general idea where you anticipate the tops of the scenery height to be. Just knowing how far off the floor the tall mountains and deep valleys will be is all that is needed.
The base sky-blue color I used is Valspar (Lowe’s) American Tradition #4006-5B, Adrift and I’ve been very happy with the result. Keep in mind there is not a single “right” sky color, it ranges from a deep blue to white to gray to black (and then some), depending… The best advice I’ve seen on this is to take a photo of the sky that you like and compare it to those thousands of color cards at the home improvement center (trying to hold the card up against the sky doesn’t work).
My train room is also the family room. It’s painted a neutral tan color. Oh, well, at least I won’t have to paint over it when it comes time to move after I retire.
Most of my layout right now is a free-standing table, which is technically a “peninsula” because it does attach to the up-against-the-wall section. That tucks under a 45-degree roofline. It actually works out pretty well. The walls don’t draw any attention away from the trains. I have a couple of small sections where the layout does meet a vertical wall, and I plan to put printed backdrops on thin foamboard and mount them against the wall.
My basement is concrete block. When we moved in, I first washed the walls and then painted them with a white water-sealing paint. The paint also comes in a couple of colors, including a light blue, so for the second coat I picked out a mortar line in the concrete block that was about 40" off the floor as a divider. I painted everything below that white, and everything above that with the light blue. As I began building the layout, I used the same light blue as the base paint color for the backdrop. That way, areas where I’ve put in some benchwork (shelves in my case) and track, but no scenery or backdrop yet, blend in with the more finished parts of the layout with a backdrop and scenery.
My original plan for my trainroom was to represent the inside of an old train station with beadboard and wainscote. Now that it is done and my layout is about 75% done, I realize that most of that work is not visible, but it still has a good ‘feeling’ to it. I used a light green top and darker green bottom. The photos are when I first started putting some benchwork in.
My train room is a custom built insulated shed that will have something like sky blue internal walls.
If however I was in your position where the train room was in the house.
My approach would be entirely different in that while fitted with the necessary extra lights and power points more than a normal room I hate dark working areas.
The walls would be painted in a color I liked that doesn’t detract from the rest of house and being the boring type all wood work ect would be white.
This also means the use of back scenes around the layout.
Only train nuts like us would want a dedicated custom train room no use for anything else type room.
So called normal people don’t, and could see it as a reason not to buy.
If at some time in the future you wish to sell up and move to a bigger better location or smaller better location as personal taste and needs dictates.
My trainroom is an 11 x 15 spare bedroom. The original room filling layout was dismantled in 2008 and a new one built in its place. This of course gave me the opportunity to start fresh.
There was a painted backdrop (about 24 inchs high over layout surface) which I repainted to be about 30 inches high. The rest of the walls/ceiling were painted “ceiling white”. The white helps lighten the area, and is a clean neutral color.
On the subject of backdrops… I actually painted my own - all of it being hills and countryside. I am not an artist by any means, but did read up on the subject and recalled watching the guy on PBS who had various shows on basic painting. If you aren’t up to that, then I would do the basic sky/clounds for a backdrop, and get some commercial cutouts to paste wherever needed.
IMHO, a backdrop makes the layout. Even the simplist one does wonders.
Yes . a white ceiling is important for light ! Got to have a backdrop with a minimum of a " SKY" colored blue, takes it from " train set" to “layout” … Jerry
OH! ps that two tone green room is “killer” .mite not be good for trains but a nice looking room [tup]
My train room is also my living room, with the train running around 7.5 feet above the floor, on 10’ high walls. Everything below is a nondescript beige, while all above the line is a light royal blue, very close to the Pantone 2935C recommended for blue screen filming, my eventual goal. The lower walls are decorated with framed train pictures & parts, and train paraphernalia such as lanterns and a piece of real track are displayed around the room on strategic shelves. I’ll probably also display some consists that don’t really fit my layout just yet, such as the slowly growing circus train, on individual shelves.
If this is to be a permanent railroad, I would build the table framework first and then get ScenicKing 7"x11" background,(or some other background ) before painting the walls. I electronically matched the blue color of the sky on the wall to that of the top blue on the ScenicKing paper background before pasting it in place. I stippled on clouds to hide any mismatch in blue color. My scenicKing background goes from desert, to prairie, to mountains, to urban scenes, so there is a blending of themes on my 24’x24’ around the room garage loft layout, (with an inside stairway). Bob Hahn
My train room is a purpose-built room, and originally was to occupy the entire basement. All that I was required to do was add a house atop it. [(-D]
I had planned to have a small workshop (for trains only), but someone decided that she’d prefer the laundry room in the basement rather than on the ground level or upstairs.
After the rooms were partioned-off, I insulated all of the exterior walls, then dry walled all of the walls and added a suspended ceiling.
After completing construction of the house, I was surprised to find quite a bit of lumber “left-over”. [:-^] 2"x4"s make into a very sturdy support for benchwork, especially when bolted to the walls, and there seemed to be a lot of leftover 1"x4" select pine, too - perfect for open grid benchwork. What a lucky coincidence! [swg]
I had two walls-worth of benchwork in place when it was decided that the kids needed a place to entertain their friends. Out came the benchwork, and up went two more partition walls, with about 200 square feet of layout room suddenly gone. Compounding the loss of area was the shape of the “new” layout room - about 560 sq. ft., in this oddly-shaped package:
I quickly filled it with benchwork, before any other floorspace could be snatched away.
What I had done in all corners of the original layout room was to provide for coved corners, as explained below. When that room was expropriated, I simply replaced the 3/8" drywall with 1/2" board where necessary, patched any bolt holes in the walls and finished the room as any other.
To allow for coved corners when the room is boarded, use 3/8" board instead of 1/2" (or 1/2" in place of 5/8") for at least one stud spacing on either side of the corners. For outside corners, allow up t
