Donohue's New Backdrop

It was long due, but now Donohue's got its brand new photo backdrop. It was printed on heavy flat paper and secured with double-face tape. Nothing fancy here. We moved from a shelf to a paper mill just in a few second.

However, I can't say I'm 100% satisfied. First, I did some little mistakes when I stiched the original photos together. Nothing important, but it means I'll have to hide some mistakes with scenery later.

Also, it was evident that perspective works from some angles, and not from other. That's a short coming you rarely see on "official" layout pictures because people don't post those pictures. In fact, those discrepancies appears well in video. But there's almost nothing we can do about it. It was a set of ludicrously thin flat buildings or a realistic backdrop. Choose your poison and assume it. There's not perfect solution here.

Seen from the "wrong" perspective angle

 
The biggest problem is the paper we used can be easily damaged. It will need extra care when doing the wet scenery. It will be tricky, no less.

Seen from the "correct" perspective angle

But whatever the issues, I think it's better to move forward at this point. There will always be room for improvement later. Stalling the project for such reasons would be stupid. So let's move on.

Also, we found out adding some 3D elements here and there in some key area really helps to bring life to the backdrop, hiding it's 2D nature. I can also say that I'll have to improvement my structure weathering to match the backdrop. Now I perfectly understand why color choice is primordial in creating a scene.

So, in the end, I'd say I'm 75% satisfied. We did an operation session later and it was quite fun to feel the trains was definitely going somewhere. More in that on another post.

By the way, track laying is now officially completed. The conversion to code 83 went smootly and we are now tracking down small little bugs here and there.