question about view blocks.......

[trainsteve2435]

hello everyone, i have sort of a dilema here...... i have 2 walthers back ground buildings that i want to use on my lay out. the problem is, is that i dont have the free space for them between my outer most line (main line) and the back drop i installed. i was thinking of useing them off of a spur track, but they have no back on them. then i thought about takeing a piece of 1/8" masonite and cutting it down to about 10" high or so to place the buildings up against. my question is.... has anyone ever done this and if so, will it look ok? i would also paint the view block sky blue to match the rest of the back drop. im just worried that haveing two buildingsthat are no deeper than 3" might look kinda stupid placed out from the rear of my layout. any comments and ideas are really welcome and appreciated. thanks in advance!
steve

 

[Matthyro]

The buildings should look fine when viewed from the front. If you don't have room between the outer main line and the backdrop, how would the spur track have space?

 

[trainsteve2435]

robin, i was going to move the buildings in towards the center of the layout away from the back drop. i have 3" of space between my outer main and the back drop, so i didnt have enough space to add a turnout to reach the buildings if i were to have put them up againts the back drop. i had plenty of space to place the buildings, but i didnt figure it would have been very proto typical to have to access them from the main, and block it up like that, thats why i was trying to figure out a better place to put them. if i posted a couple of pics of my layout so far, maybe you could take a look and see what you think? thanks!

 

[MasonJar]

Steve,

Post some pics - we'll all be happy to look.

Art Curren used to do some interesting things with flats, and "not-so-flats" like your shallow buildings. You can look up some of his stuff in MR via the index at trains.com.

Andrew

 

[CalFlash]

We used a lot of buildings against the backdrop esp the Walthers Cornerstone kits on my friend's layout. Most of them we were able to stretch in length using parts that would have been the backside wall. I used DPM parts to complete the backside of a Magnason kit to create 1 building and the rest of the kit was built on another site against the backdrop. YES it works.

 

[trainsteve2435]

hello everyone, here is the pics of my layout so far, the one pic of the unfinished back drop and the base of one of the buildings is sorta where i was hgopeing to use the back ground kits. thanks for all the help and as always, all comments and ideas are welcome and appreciated. thanks!

 

[trainsteve2435]

and heres 1 more.....

 

[trainsteve2435]

well, i posted these pictures of my layout so far about a week and a half ago, i figured someone would have had some suggestions by now. if anyone does, please feel free to share your ideas, im drawing a blank here. thanks again!

 

[jetrock]

How much space is available between the back of the layout and the track? You might use the front face of the model as a flat against the backdrop, or cut down the thickness of the backdrop building to fit the available space if a flat is a little too narrow.

Also--normally a black backing piece, rather than a sky blue one, looks better.

 

[trainsteve2435]

hey jetrock, thanks for the info and intrest. the availiable space between the back drop and the track is 3", but im not sure how this would work because the track you see there is the west bound main line. would it be weird to actually make another back drop about 30" wide and 10" tall, kind of like a scenic diveder out from the main back drop about 12" to 14" to put the back ground buildings against? i have never seen anything like this before, so im not sure if it would look stupid or un realistic. any suggestions or ideas are really appreciated. thanks again!:thumb:

 

[CalFlash]

It depends if you want those back tracks as part of the scene. The backdrop you see behind my pic of the warehouse is a false one with 4 tracks behind. In our case, the tracks behind were mostly for staging and a "cutoff" so a train could "bypass" the town.