A journal following the history, design, construction and operation of Bernard Kempinski's O Scale model railroad depicting the U. S. Military Railroad (USMRR) Aquia-Falmouth line in 1863, and other model railroad projects.
©Bernard Kempinski All text and images, except as noted, on this blog are copyrighted by the author and may not be used without permission.
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August 9, 2015

The Backdrops are Up

Backdrop temporarily taped in position


Are you sure about this?
We used a balsa wood piece to smooth out the bubbles.
Lower horizon looks better
View toward the corner


After a lovely morning and a long walk, Alicia and I installed the backdrops.  I first prepped the wall by patching the small holes from picture holders. Then I touched up the paint.

Next we temporarily placed the backdrop with bits of masking tape as the directions that LARC Products suggested. We followed their directions in peeling and rolling.  We used temporarily installed pieces of ¼ inch plywood to support the backdrop roll as we installed, that helped hold the roll steady.

Alicia used a long piece of soft balsa wood to help smooth the backdrop material and to remove bubbles, while I did the peeling of the backing and positioning. The first piece went up fast and trouble free. We had a little more trouble getting the second piece installed as it had two corners to negotiate. But we got it to work well by trimming the corners and slightly overlapping the pieces.

Since we installed the back drop over a tan wall, the backdrop appears darker when the white backing was peeled away. In this case it works to our advantage as it hints at the "LA Smog" look. For a pristine mountain scene, I would make sure the underlying  surface is white.

We were both impressed with the Fab-Tex material. The strength and forgiveness were very impressive. You can pull it off if you need to reposition.

The instructions say it is a 3-person job, but we did it just us two.

I decided that I made the horizon a bit too high. So I installed the backdrop below grade by one inch. That lowered the horizon to the perfect position.

If I were to do this again, I would make the refinery on the left side a tad smaller.

With the backdrop up, it is time to finish the foam surface and the fascia. I plan to widen the layout on the left. But more on that later.

Thanks to Bill Brown and LARC Products for doing a great job printing my files.  I highly recommend this product.


Refinery on left side. I plan to widen the benchwork at the far left.



4 comments:

  1. Alicia was down in the basement? Working on the layout? Holy Cow! That is much more news worthy than and exciting than the new layout project. Which by the way looks nifty. I look forward to seeing what happens next week.

    Best,

    Gerard

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You know what they say about husband and wife putting up wall paper, well this was much easier.

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  2. Wow! That backdrop looks superb. Did you take the pictures yourself?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. It is a photo composite of about 20 different images I took in Port of LA on a synthetic sky. See my earlier post for more detail. http://usmrr.blogspot.com/2015/07/update-on-harbor-project-layout-pola.html

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