Just saw a home show on TV that made a mirror using a rattle can spraying the mirror surface on a piece of glass. Discovered Rustoleum and Krylon make this stuff among others. It runs about $12 per can but is cheaper then buying a mirror and the big advantage is the mirror is on the top of the glass so there is no gap in the reflection caused by the glass thickness. Always looking for cheaper and better ways to do things.
It looks like you use these mirror spray paints on the inside of the glass surface-not the front. And you have to use clear glass or acrylic. So there is no difference between the spray and a regular mirror.
I have two very large mirrors on my layout. I looked into purchasing a front surfaced mirror and found the cost to be prohibitive. About $600 apiece if I remember right. I also looked into what it would take to create my own. It involved a lot of chemicals and looked like something I could easily make mess of. It wasn't as simple as spraying the front surface of a pane of glass with silver or chrome paint. I decided to settle for back surfaced mirrors and live with the gaps. I bought my mirrors at Lowe's for $18 each. The only place it is obviously a mirror is where the backdrop and the mirror meet at 90 degree angles.
Here's one view that doesn't include the mirror/backdrop intersection.
Here's a wider shot of the same scene. The tall building in the center of the picture hides the gap mirror/backdrop intersection. You can see the reflection of the tall building on the right side of the photo.
Here's a shot of the other mirror where the gap is more obvious.
A 1/16" thick acrylic sheet mirror came in handy for my little scene, been some years, but if I recall a 6"x6" piece on ebay was around $7.
Btw, John-NYBW, the mirrors add extra depth and interest to your superb city scenes.
Regards, Peter
Have you thought about using a vinyl mirror sheet? Etsy offers one that looks good-no ripples or distortion.
HO-Velo Btw, John-NYBW, the mirrors add extra depth and interest to your superb city scenes. Regards, Peter
Thank you. That was the idea. I knew I wanted to use mirrors when I saw how John Allen had used them on the G&D, especially the station scene at Great Divide. A mirror adds depth to a scene in a way a flat backdrop can't. It essentially doubles the apparent size of any scene.
There are a few tricks to using them effectively. Most important is to control the viewing angles so that something unwanted doesn't get reflected. Lettering needs to be kept out of any reflected view because it will appear backwards. The roof top billboard on the department store is angled so that only the back of it appears in the reflection and appears to be a second billboard on the opposite corner. The reflection of the Speedy Relief sign is blocked by the hotel on the opposite corner of the intersection.
I played around with mirrors on a previous layout. It does have a learning curve.
The blue and red cab trucks crossing the tracks are one in the same vehicle.
The BRANCH trailer and the one ahead of it is one in the same trailer that has a roll up door on each end of the trailer.
You guys do some great work with mirrors.
I purchased a box of 12" by 12" mirror tiles from Lowes cheap. I then used paint remover to CAREFULLY strip the paint sealer off the back of the tiles. Once the paint was removed, a very gentle polishing of the mirror silvering yielded a pretty good first surface mirror. I used these mirror in two places on my layout. One is used to make a roadway appear to continue on under a roadway bridge that is located against a backdrop. The other is used to extend a road and track that run into the backdrop at a corner. A pedestrian bridge was scratch built to span both the roadway and track while hiding the edges of the backdrop. Both are effective enough that visitors keep trying to see where these roads/track go. Many people think there is another room behind the corner mirror, run up the aisle to go find the other room, only to sheepishly realize that no other room exists. The mirror behind the roadway bridge is shown in this photo.
Unfortunately, the photo angle is not the best as the staging/storage cabinet at the far end of the room (behind the camera) is visible in the mirror instead of the road.
Hornblower
I saw a modular layout at a train show where someone had a stream emerging from the backdrop. They used a small mirror under a bridge to try to create the illusion the stream extended beyond the backdrop. It wasn't very convincing. Instead it just looked like there was a hole in the backdrop.
Mirrors can do wonders to extend the apparent size of a scene if used properly. Generally speaking, a mirror which the viewer will be looking directly into is not going to work. I think there was an MR article a number of years ago in which a road angled toward the backdrop into a wooded area. A small mirror was placed perpindicular to the road and trees were used to hide the edges. It worked because of the angle of the road, the viewer was not able to look directly into the mirror. It's all about controlling the viewing angle.
I think there was also an article showing two mirrors placed at a 45 degree angle to the road and perpindicular to each other. If I remember right, it created the illusion of an intersection. The mirrors reflected into each other.
John-NYBWI think there was also an article showing two mirrors placed at a 45 degree angle to the road and perpindicular to each other. If I remember right, it created the illusion of an intersection. The mirrors reflected into each other.
I remember that, I think it was MR some years back. The problem is if you try to use a flat mirror to create the illusion a road runs into the distance, a car on one side of the road is reflected directly across from the actual car, so it looks like two cars about to have a head-on collision! By using two mirrors at 90-degrees from each other (45 degrees each from the road), the reflection of the car appears on the other side of the road, so it looks like two cars about to safely go past each other in opposite directions.
wjstix John-NYBW I think there was also an article showing two mirrors placed at a 45 degree angle to the road and perpindicular to each other. If I remember right, it created the illusion of an intersection. The mirrors reflected into each other. I remember that, I think it was MR some years back. The problem is if you try to use a flat mirror to create the illusion a road runs into the distance, a car on one side of the road is reflected directly across from the actual car, so it looks like two cars about to have a head-on collision! By using two mirrors at 90-degrees from each other (45 degrees each from the road), the reflection of the car appears on the other side of the road, so it looks like two cars about to safely go past each other in opposite directions.
John-NYBW I think there was also an article showing two mirrors placed at a 45 degree angle to the road and perpindicular to each other. If I remember right, it created the illusion of an intersection. The mirrors reflected into each other.
The disadvantage of normal mirror placement is that every reflection is backward so one car is driving on the right side of the road while the reflection shows the same car driving on the left side directly at the other car. Using the double mirror, we see a reflection of a reflection so nothing looks backwards. It was an interesting idea but I had already begun working on my urban scene and just couldn't work it in.
You guys are quite correct about controlling the viewing angle of the mirror for best effect. My roadway bridge mirror is positioned a little more than 90 degrees from the front of the aisle. Unless the viewer positions themself low and toward the end of the penisula containing this scene (as in the photo below), the viewer normally sees a short section of reflected roadway beyond the bridge. The disadvantage of this mirror is that the viewer can indeed reposition themself to see more of the roadway beyond. I minimized the "head-on collision" effect by simply not placing any vehicles near the mirror.
On the other hand, the mirror in the backdrop corner works well as the scene is at the inside end of an aisle meaning the width of the aisle restricts the the viewers angle of view. The mirror is parallel to the aisle centerline so the viewing angle is restricted to between 60 and 45 degrees. Only the layout can be seen in this mirror so it fools many viewers into thinking the road and railroad track really do extend beyond the backdrop into another room. An early photo of this mirror is seen below. A LOT of scenery has been added since this photo was shot.
The end of this aisle pretty much restricts the viewing angle to that shown in the photo and the upper deck makes it difficult to lean further into the scene. Actually, the closer the viewer tries to get to the mirror, the more convincing it seems, especially since you can't get close enough to see yourself in the mirror.