General Discussion (Model Railroader)

Good luck !

In the 1930's; most photography was black and white.  Probably nothing as mundane as a hardware store interior was done in color.  Look in later years for something that might work.  Watch out for the type of goods displayed though.  We did not have TV's, calculators, computers or cell phones either.

Color photography, especially for somewhat mundane subjects (like storefornts) would have been extremely expensive and rare in the 1930s.  I am not saying there aren't any, but I seriously doubt there are enough to be useful.

Perhaps examining black and white pictures, and looking to see if there are modern pictures of surviving objects (e.g. color photographs of collectible items taken recently) might offer some useful information.  Perhaps there is some graphics software out there that will can deduce the colors of other items in a picture if you can supply color information about a few key objects.

I've found a few pictures like this.  New pictures of old stores.  I'm just trying to find a head on picture.

I like to go to ebay under collectable-paper-postcards and copy-n-paste insides of buldings. Paste image to a desktop that you can resize to your scale. Then you can print your image. I also do this with signs, background buildings, machinery, people ect!

Try here:

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&va=store+display&sz=all&ei=UTF-8&fr=slv8-tyc7&b=1

or here:

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=slv8-tyc7&va=old+store+display&sz=all

I had good luck finding "grocery store shelves" using Google Images.

There are lots more where that came from.  To be honest, I can't tell if this is groceries or cans of paint, so using it inside a store should give the desired effect.  This is the inside of the grocery store:

That particular image was replicated and put on the back wall.  I took a different image and printed it on cardstock, then folded and pasted pieces together until I got the shelves and aisles.  This is what it looks like from outside the store:

Thanks for the help Jefferey. 

Mister Beasley,  I really like the 3D look of your buildings.  I think I was being lazy by looking for a straight on picture to place in the window frame. I may have to try the angled pictures like one of your other buildings.  I suppose finding the right angle is a matter of trial and error.  Thanks again.

I think this is the one you're referring to:

It's the DPM "Goodfellows Hall" building.  I used a couple of those angled, down-the-aisle shots in this one.  Here, I didn't have the luxury of dead space above the windows to hide the light bulb, so I put it behind a "shelf" as a light block.  The angled piece on the left, by the way, contains bottles of ketchup.  At this scale, they're probably gallon jugs or more.

I haven't completed the wiring of this part of the layout yet, so I'm not sure if this will be the permanent configuration.

The lady out front in the straw hat is one of Woodland Scenics "Full-Figured Folks."

On page 98 of the October 2007 issue of Model Railroader is an advertisement for a company called Railtown Windows that says they offer full color 3D effect interiors.

Their web site is http://www.railtownwindows.com