More Terraforming and Detailing

 

Work has continued on the remodeling of Philip's Creek.  The bulk scenery work has been completed on the southern end of Philip's Creek up to the creek itself.

With that work completed, some details have been added including fence posts, telegraph and power poles, some trees, and vehicles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition, I pasted a cropped Google Streetview image from Carcoar to the backdrop to add some depth to the main street. Yes, I know Carcoar is a bit further west than my modelling area but it was a good fit. Also, when the focus is on objects in the foreground, the background becomes less of an issue.

 

The focus has now moved to the northern end of Philip's Creek with the current effort on shaping the landforms before the application of the fabric and then coloured tile grout. Once again, the 50/50 mix of PVA and water will get a major workout.

 

Kingston Plains Backdrop - Substantially complete?

Following on from my previous post about two months ago, the backdrop at Kingston Plains is now substantially complete. There is a method in  this bit of pedantry. By telling myself it is substantially complete, it allows me to get on with other projects without too much of a guilty conscience. What it actually means is that the painting apart from a few foreground trees has been completed, all of the selected building photos have been located and glued to the backdrop, and the 'low profile' road bridge installed.

The painting continued the processes described in previous posts with the addition of nearer distance trees, fence lines and power poles. The latter two were drawn using a pencil with a ruler to assist the perspective and alignment. The painting process was slow and I now appreciate why major art works take so long to complete - it's so boring!! Sorry if this offends dedicated artists but I usually managed little more than half an hour before losing interest and looking for something else to do.

Two more photos of buildings were glued onto the end section of the backdrop to represent houses on the road leaving the village. The process to select and print these was outlined in my last post and they are probably a better perspective fit than the houses glued to the back of the township area. As noted previously, the township houses look right when viewed from track level but less so when viewed from normal operating eye level. However, they'll stay until I invest in a drone and can photograph more appropriate images.

The low profile road bridge was tied into the end section with the construction of a part embankment and painting the backdrop to simulate the remainder of the deck and fencing. The orientation and perspective of the image is optimised to be viewed from the other end of the module where I usually stand to watch trains entering and leaving the module. The image opposite shows a closer view of  the integration of the low profile structure and painting. 




I mentioned that I still have a few more foreground trees to paint and these will be complimented with additional trees on the module when I can pick this years crop of sedum . I am thinking that I will add a paling fence behind the milk bar to help conceal the join between the module and the backdrop. Finally, I'm still not happy with the road junction in the village so I'll probably fiddle with it a bit more when I get motivated.

As the work on the backdrop has progressed, I was also installing a stock yard at the far end of the module so the fencing in particular could be integrated with the backdrop . It too has also been completed although the fleeces on the sheep look very clean, so a bit more work is required there. The stockyard will be the subject for another post.

More on Backdrops - Still a work in progress

I had hoped that I would writing about the completion of the Kingston Plains backdrop in this post but, unsurprisingly, progress has been slower than planned. So this post provides an update rather than a description of the final product.

The Kingston Plain backdrop is significantly more complex than the one behind the Hall's Creek module ( https://philipscreek.blogspot.com/2018/09/finally-getting-to-backdrops.html ). I needed the backdrop to give an impression of a larger community beyond the few structures that I could fit on the module. It also has to portray a rural environment beyond the town. In many respects, the backdrop becomes a two dimensional extension of the existing landscaped module, a combination of  shaped terrain and models of man made structures structures.

This backdrop is also a work in three parts:

• at the right of the silo,  a rural vista which also shows how the goods shed and stockyard are integrated into the countryside;
• at the left of the silo, additional houses forming part of the township; and 
• the end section which shows a road across the railway linking the visual with the unseen part of the township in front of the module.

(No, not a model of Kansas - please ignore the yet to be located and apparently flying houses)

The natural features have been painted using similar techniques as those detailed in my earlier post. However, I have not included trees and other vegetation closer to township as they may need to be integrated with some of the man made structures. But the main challenge on this backdrop has been how to represent the man made features so that they appear at the correct distances between the back of the module and the horizon.

For a while, I contemplated the use of some low profile buildings for some of the buildings near the service station but these didn't provide sufficient depth. I needed the buildings to appear to be part of the painted scene. Having got the natural terrain to a reasonable point, it's a risky process for me to attempt to paint structures onto the scene. Apart from the challenge of painting an accurate representation of a building, the image needs to convey the correct distance and the right perspective. So, for these structures I decided to integrate photos of particular buildings into the backdrop. I have seen this technique used effectively on several display layouts but then again, it always seems easier for others.

The sourcing of suitable images required a bit of research. Initially I looked at real estate agent selling photos. The one thing that quickly became apparent was that the viewing angle becomes far more critical for structures that populate the fore and middle grounds. My track level is about 1150mm above the ground whereas my eye level is a further 500mm higher. While it's possible to occasionally crouch down to track level, most train operations are conducted with a downwards perspective on module. Consequently, there needs to be a slightly downwards perspective on any building photograph.
As this photo shows, most real estate agents photos are either taken at ground level or in some instances looking up. Images from these angles just don't look right when placed adjacent or behind models viewed from above.

An image taken from a drone will probably yield the best results but in the absence of such photography, I then tried Google Street View as a source of possible building photos. This has proved much more lucrative, if perhaps very time consuming. I needed to find buildings of suitable age and appearance on the low side of the street or perhaps, being viewed down the hill at a T intersection. In addition to images of buildings taken perpendicular to the street, I also wanted to find photos of houses where the road was diagonally disappearing into the distance as well as houses where the back yard was visible.

Once I had identified a suitable building, I did a screen capture and dropped it onto a PowerPoint slide. Here, with a bit of trial and error, it was cropped and resized to the size needed for the backdrop. as part of the experimentation, I usually created several images of different sizes on the one slide.

The slide was then printed and, in what was a literal 'cut and paste' exercise, the actual building was cut from the page and pasted onto the backdrop. The photo opposite shows three houses fronting the main road in Kingston Plains. A fourth building is hidden by the service station workshop.





While it sounds simple, there was a fair bit of experimentation to get the angle and size correct. This photo shows several buildings tacked into position on a road disappearing into the distance. By the way, the grass colour has since been toned down.

I am also aware that I will need to use some form of matt spray to protect the pasted image to prevent fading and moisture damage.




I mentioned earlier that I had chosen not to use any low relief structures in the township. However, I have installed part of a road bridge over tracks at the start of the Kingston Plains station. This allows me to conceal to entrance to the module as well as providing the appearance of a road link between the two parts of the town. The bridge is based on a drawing that I have of a standard road crossing on the North Coast line. Hopefully, road bridges were not too dissimilar on the Main North.

At present the bridge superstructure and deck have not been fixed into position as I need to paint the remaining portion of the bridge and abutment onto the backdrop. I also need to fabricate a portion of an approach embankment and paint the road leading up to the bridge. The home signal for the station had to go. The bridge would obscure it. Presumably it has been moved to the other side of the bridge where it can easily be seen by the crew of a locomotive.





The only man made objects that I have attempted to paint are the roads and these has been the source of considerable frustration. Getting the interface between module and the backdrop to look right is proving difficult and I'm also not yet satisfied with the roads as they disappear into the distant terrain.



All said, this is most definitely still a work in progress, more to follow!

Finally getting to the Backdrops

Over the past few months when not getting distracted, I have made a slow start in addressing one of the major unfinished aspects of Philip's Creek, the lack of backdrops around most of the layout. This may be the first of several posts on this topic as I work my way around seeking to depth to what is otherwise a very narrow strip of ground, probably little more than 50m wide in 1:1 scale.

The first obvious question, why the hell didn't I address this in an orderly planned way before I started building the layout? The short answer is that I was too bloody impatient and wanted to get track down and run trains. As a plea in mitigation, the layout evolved over time to fit the available space. When it started in 1996, Philip's Creek was a continuous run loop and the viewing direction was inwards. A few years later, it became a point to point operation and the viewing direction was reversed as the layout started to run around walls. So even if I had installed a backdrop before laying track, it would be been superseded as the layout evolved.

Currently, the two primary methods of installing backdrops are to glue or fix some combination of panorama photos or to paint an appropriate scene on a blank sheet of timber.  Having said this, I can foresee the day when both methods will be  a thing of the past and we have some combination of wide screens behind the layout showing a backdrop where clouds move across the sky as well as vehicles, people and animals move in the background, all linked with appropriate sounds.

But back to the present, I wrestled with the decision as to whether to install a photo panorama or attempt to paint a scene. I believe that a good photo panorama, properly scaled provides the ultimate backdrop. However, these work best if installed first before track is laid. Terrain features such as creeks and hills can then be aligned with the panorama. As I said, I didn't have willpower to do that so, in essence, I'm playing 'catch up football' . A few years ago, I did experiment with a panorama which I photographed near Armidale. After some 'photoshop' work I did a test printout, taped it together and installed it near the Phillip's Creek coal mine. I was able to align a creek but it didn't seem to fit with other terrain features. For me, this represents the ultimate problem with a photo backdrop, the challenge of matching the backdrop with existing topography already in place on the layout such as the Hall's Creek module shown below.

So I decided to have a go at painting a back scene. I am certainly no Michelangelo or Albert Namatjira but there is plenty of advice around. There is a great article in Issue 6 of the Australian Journal of Railway Modelling together with numerous items and video on the internet. 

One consistent theme in most of these is the need to work from back to front or the distant to the foreground. Another is the need to dab with a bristle brush  rather than paint when seeking to create distant vegetation. All part of the learning experience.

As the painting moved to the foreground, there was the challenge of how to transition horizontal elements onto a vertical face which can be viewed from several angles without loss of perspective. For this module, the creek is that major element.








I sought to achieve this by representing a bend in the creek which then disappeared behind folds in the terrain. I painted a small portion of water on the backdrop which then appeared to disappear behind other hills.






 
 


The other thing that I have actively sought to do is to place trees on the terrain which has the effect of breaking up the backdrop particularly at corners.





The overall view of the module with the completed backdrop is shown below. This is another case where the camera presents a different view from what appears to the Mark 1 eyeball, particularly matching the colour of the terrain with that of the backdrop. The colours seems to be a better match than they appear in the photo below.

I'm reasonably happy with this as a first effort, but I suspect that I have done the easiest one first. The next one, Kingston Plains will probably be more challenging particularly with roads and probably buildings to be included on the backdrop. Work has just started with clouds added and a number of potential scenes identified. More to follow in another post.