Background question....

[MudHen_462]

What makes the best material for a contoured background for my layout ? It will cover an area 21 linear feet long, and 33 inches high. I plan on simply painting it sky blue with clouds (if I can figure out how to do the clouds without trashing my background.

IronGoat

[Anonymous]

A friend of mine double laminated two 4 by 8 feet sheets of sixty thou of styrene. I works well, takes paint well, and is bendable. He used auto body epoxy and very very fine sand paper to fill in the seams.

[cacole]

Masonite hardboard would work, provided the curvature is not too drastic, but you would have seams to deal with every 8 feet, or 10 feet, depending on what your local building supply store has in stock.

[mls1621]

HomeDepot stocks a product called polywall. It's a flexible plastic product, 1/16" thick and comes in 4'X8' sheets.

One side is textured, the other is smooth. I used it behind my layout, it covers 24 feet with a 12" radius in the corner.

I used liquid nails and staples to attach it to the back of three inch base molding and hung it with screws. At the joint, I used duct tape on the back to hold the pieces tightly together and scotch invisible tape on the front to cover the joint. After painting, the joint is almost invisible.

I hope this is helpful.

[leighant]

I used masonite and taped and floated over the joints with joint compound, just as if it were plasterboard. Worked fine for me. One caveat-- I had to move out of that house after a year and half and I don't know if the taped-andfloated jointed in masonite will hold up over the years. My background was 6 feet along one wall and 7 feet along another wall with a curved corner. I painted blue interior latex and spray painted clouds with white spray paint can and John Lowrance stencil method. I remember Walthers used to sell the cloud stencils for $10 or so, but I made my own and tearing cloud edge shapes on 29 cent sheets of posterboard.

The trick to the clouds. Hold the stencil against the blue wall and spray what will be the top EDGE of a cloud. That will make a sharp white edge like sunlight catching the top of a cloud. For the bottom of the cloud, hold the stencil out several inches while spraying and it makes a soft-edged wispy bottom. Lowrance had a great story in
Railroad Model Craftsman years ago.
Kenneth L. Anthony, Santa Vaca & Santa Fe Rwy.

[leighant]

Lowrance's article on spray painting cloud backgrounds was in
RMC Mar86 p.63

Walther's stock number for the stencils, "The Clouds"
Walthers Part # 519-1

It was not in scale today.

A link to the Walther's page with the stencil, see if this works...

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/519-1

[MudHen_462]

THANK YOU, ALL..... great advice as always. You've all been a big help.
IronGoat

[Anonymous]

I remember a work shop held by a member at my NMRA Division meeting. He used two foot wide sheet aluminum made for forming gutters and siding. It's seamless and, if I remember correctly, came in 50 foot lengths, maybe longer. It was held in place by channels. You can find these materials at siding suppliers.

[CBQ_Guy]

Someone mentioned the sheet aluminum which is one good solution. There was an article a few years back in, I think it was RMC, explaining how to use this material. There was a special tool you had to buy that made a small dimple in the top edge of the aluminum. This would catch on a strip of plastic J-channel attached at the top of the area where the aluminum hung from. It also allowed the backdrop to be removable if for some some reason you didn't want, or couldn't have, something (semi)permanent. I don't have the issue info handy but maybe someone else does or you can find something at the magazine index search you can click on at the top of this page.

Also, there is a video showing how to work on backdrops and use the stencils, by the manufacturer of the stencils at:

http://cloudman.home.texas.net/

Hope some of this helps you...