Walthers is closed right now, or I would phone them.
I am trying to decide on an order of backgrounds tonight, but I am confused by what I see listed. Does anyone have exerience with the Instant Horizons?
I see the products listed as "country to city" is just a reversed image of the product "city to country".
And the illustrations for "desert to mountain" and "mountain to desert" is identical at Walthers and all over the web.
What gives? I had hoped to use a series of 5 of these (mountain to desert, dry wash desert, saguro desert, desert to mountain, or something like that) to cover 15 feet of the back wall, but I don't think there is a series of five that actually "blend". They just seem to be pairs and even then the illustrations don't show a difference in the pairs.
Not a big deal, but I may have to go to another supplier.
http://www.backdropwarehouse.com/indexbdwh.htm
http://www.debenllc.com/servlet/Detail?no=2336
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Fawlty Logic wrote: Walthers is closed right now, or I would phone them.I am trying to decide on an order of backgrounds tonight, but I am confused by what I see listed. Does anyone have exerience with the Instant Horizons?I see the products listed as "country to city" is just a reversed image of the product "city to country".And the illustrations for "desert to mountain" and "mountain to desert" is identical at Walthers and all over the web. What gives? I had hoped to use a series of 5 of these (mountain to desert, dry wash desert, saguro desert, desert to mountain, or something like that) to cover 15 feet of the back wall, but I don't think there is a series of five that actually "blend". They just seem to be pairs and even then the illustrations don't show a difference in the pairs.Not a big deal, but I may have to go to another supplier.
The "Country to City" and "City to Country" is the way I've understood the Walthers backdrops to work. The one listed first is what type scene will match at the left of the backdrop and the one listed second will match at the right side. So a city scene will go to the left of "city to Country" and a country scene will go to the right.
I believe they have the wrong illustration attached to one of the "Desert to Mountain" backdrops, they should be reversed like "Country to City."
Plus, you need to realize, these have been around for quite a while, they're not as sophisticated as some of the more recent offerings.
On my last layout I used the Walthers backgrounds extensively. I liked them because they are not so detailed as to take away from the modeling on the layout. If you can get just one at first, do it. In the package / box is a sheet that shows all of the scenes with their names and part numbers. I cut them out and arranged them to match ends to come up with the ones that I needed. I found two problems by using them, but as far as I was concerned they were trivial. One is that sometimes they are slightly different shades of the same print due to the amount of ink in the system at the time they were printed. Second is the but joint. I hid as many joints as possible with tall trees or other scenery items in front of the joints. In a couple of places where I needed a transition that wasn't available, I cut off a section above a hill, then laminated one over the other. I also trimmed off all of the "sky" so the joints would only be on the "ground" parts. I painted my walls to match the blue sky on the prints so I wouldn't have to trim "inside" the trees branches. That was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it.
Elmer.
The above is my opinion, from an active and experienced Model Railroader in N scale and HO since 1961.
(Modeling Freelance, Eastern US, HO scale, in 1962, with NCE DCC for locomotive control and a stand alone LocoNet for block detection and signals.) http://waynes-trains.com/ at home, and N scale at the Club.