Another step might be to tint the walls a reddish brick color to give more of a "hint" that it's a building.
Very neat idea with lots of possibilities.
Mike Tennent
Good idea, for the urban modeler. Thank you! I have a big passenger station with an office building on top that would benefit from that treatment.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I put this "Background Building" on one edge of my layout. It's only an inch or so thick. Since my layout is low, it really doesn't block the viewer's line of sight, so I just detailed the interior a bit. The open loading dock doors give a through-the-wall look.
From the layout side:
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
We've done a similar thing on our layout. We've (the girls and I) made 7 - 10" "mini modules, like a loading dock or a refinery and mounted them to the backdrop with velcro buttons so we can switch them out.
Bob Berger, C.O.O. N-ovation & Northwestern R.R. My patio layout....SEE IT HERE
There's no place like ~/ ;)
I like the idea very much. I have just been trying to visualize a "city" area on my planned layout - the idea of the track always hanging on the edge of the city rather than going through it always seems lacking. We can succeed in placing trees and other landscape ploys between the track and the edge of the layout - why not some building-type structures? Don't want to over-do it but strategically placed - might be a nice effect. Being easily removeable is good.
Chuck
Grand River & Monongah Railroad and subsidiary Monongah Railway
ndbprr wrote:I have this idea and am looking for the experiences of anyone who has tried something similar. Since I am modeling the PRR through Philadelphia there were large buildings on both sides of the tracks. My thinking is to use clear styrene or plexiglas to represent some of the buildings on the viewing side of the railroad. I would mount these in a slot in a block of wood on the front of the layout. I could score windows and floors into the material and scratch brick sections in areas to give the viewer the idea of the building. I would then lightly (very lightly) dust the non window areas to reinforce the idea of a building. By having it mounted in the slot the switch crew or the big 0-5-0 hook would have access to the railroad by removing it and replacing them. Any thoughts?
N:
Interesting variation on the "view from inside" trick, with the buildings completely clear. Essentially, you are building invisible buildings. Neat idea.