Railroad Photography Scene - Adding some color

Its been a really tough month around here. We did as much as we possibly could during a classic Colorado fake spring period. The yard and flower beds look great but I didn't accomplish much of anything else.

In a few moments of free time I added some color to the model of the photography scene. I even added some "brick" colors to the little buildings.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Railroad Photography Scene - Adding some height

As we look at the scene, the water will be ground zero. The back edge will be raised up. A piece of the gatorfoam is a scale 3/4" thick (remember the model is 1/4" to the 1"), so I glued two together to raise the "land" up to 1 1/2" above the water level. I want this on a gentle curve, a cosmetic curve if you will. From the viewer's standpoint it is a convex curve (the center of the curve is closest to the viewer). After I cut this I'm starting to think that maybe it should be a concave curve ( the center of the curve is furthest away from the viewer).

Elevating the buildings above the harbor does makes for a nice looking scene and I think the concave curve would probably show off rolling stock and locomotives better. I'm really debating the car float and float apron at this point though. It seems to get bigger every time I look at it. I think I will drop the tug concept, even using the smallest tug I think it would make the scene to crowded. Things to dwell on.

The first "land" layer being glued down.

And here we go with the second layer.

The land is in place and stands at 1 1/2" above the water. That would be about 10 in scale which feels about right.

Just lining up the buildings, no particular rhyme or reason at this point. This is a convex view at this point so your view would be from the outside of the cosmetic curve. The curve is not readily apparent which is fine, its supposed to be subtle. Note how much space the barge, including the apron, takes up within the length of the scene.

An aerial view. The car float and the apron could be swapped side to side. There is quite a bit of  water space available. the curve is a bit more obvious from this viewpoint as well.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Railroad Photography Scene - First changes

Another one of those "Aha" moments. I cut out some outlines on graph paper to get an idea of how things might fit and discovered two important points. First, don't pick a scale that is to hard to work with, 3/16ths to the inch is definitely hard to work with. Second, those car floats are big!

Quick change of plans changing the scale to something easier to work with. A 1/4 to the inch is not that much bigger and definitely easier to transfer measurements with. At this point I'm still determined to include the car float and the bridge float. They are just going to need to slide as far to the left side as I can get them. Its either that or stretch out to 4' and that's starting to get more ambitious than I had originally planned for. If I move them further to the right I'm going to run out of space for any kind of foreground building. I may end up widening the whole thing to 20 inches. I checked that and I can squeeze it into the intended space if I re-arrange my space.

At this point I like working with the gatorfoam, Its pretty easy to cut with the x-acto knife with the added benefit of being able to snap it like styrene once you have cut down through the inner foam and scored that back edge once or twice. I'm making up a number of buildings based on measurements from the various manufactures. The bunch I have "finished" are background buildings from Walther's Cornerstone series.

Moving forward!

The new foundation

Throwing together the first building

Mmm, the car float and the float bridge in place on the far right.

Now trying it to the far left

Enough buildings to fill the back. Note that these will be raised up at least 1" maybe 2"

Important information on the back. These are all Cornerstone buildings at this point but I have scoped out some others from N Scale Architect, Monster Modelworks and Itla. I'll be building a few mock ups of those as well.