Weekend Project, Building a New Backdrop.

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I have my weekend project lined up. Building a new backdrop. I got new poster paper today for the back plate. The scene is printed but still needs to be cut out, that’s a couple hours work right there. I have to take down the old back plate, as the backdrop on it is fading and is definately looking it’s age. The new back plate will have to be assembled and attached to the wall. This will be done with wood glue, as before, and the back plate will be held in place with thumb tacks until the glue dries. The seams will be covered with masking tape, then the whole thing will be painted Nimble Blue. After the paint is dry, the printed sections will be joined together and attached to the back plate with a thin layer of white glue and allowed to dry. The last touch will be to add some clouds .

These are pics with the present backdrop. The new backdrop will be very similar. Consider these as BEFORE photos.









2

Jeffrey,

nice to see those week-end project are alive among model railroaders. have you plan to seal your new poster backdrop? perhaps a coat of transparent paint or any other sealing stuff helps preserving the poster from getting old and reveal its age…

and if you accept some constructive criticisms on you pictures, I’d suggest to concentrate more on camera focus and JPG compression. I often see neat layouts getting “ruined” by poor photographs.

hope to see more pics of your weekend work,

regards,

3

Denny: The backdrop is printed on an inkjet printer, so spraying anything on it just makes the colors run. I learned that the hard way. As for the focus, there’s not much I can do. The camera is a $50 Wal-Mart special that I bought almost 6 years ago. When you don’t have much, you have to make do with you have, and on a $600 a month income, I don’t have much.

4

ah, yep! don’t try to wet an inkjet printed sheet :slight_smile: been there, done that.

sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you in any way. with a fixed focus camera I think you can try to shot photos from afar. getting closer to the subject results in a blurry photo.

regards

5

I wish I had a better camera. Mine is a little pinhole camera. Moving it even a short distance back and the item I’m taking pics of gets real small[xx(]. And it saves it all in BMP format. It’s a wonder I get the kind of pics I do.[:)]