09-01-2010, 01:57 PM
Hopefully, you had some idea of what scenic features were going to go where when you sketched out your layout plan. Give those a try.
If not, (and even if so) make some temporary scenery to get a feel of what looks good and feels good. An old suggestion for temporary scenery from the pages of Model Railroader was to ball up newspaper and lash it together with masking tape as the scenery support. Overlay the newspaper with pieces or strips of brown paper grocery bags, and tape down as necessary. Hot glue might work just as well for the heavy brown paper. The brown paper gives you a color that won't jar your senses. Cardboard boxes cut to size - and painted if you want to - are good stand-ins for structures. Another method of temporary sturctures is to tape photos of the desired structure - model or prototype - onto cardboard or a box.
Step back and look at the result. Adjust or rip out and redo to better please yourself. Look carefully again in a couple of weeks while running trains, and repeat the process as necessary. Once it's what you want, you can switch to a more permanent scenery medium like plaster or whatever.
Reality is that unless you can visualize scenery that will fit and look good the 1st time - few of us can - the mockup of temporary scenery is a great way to actually try things out.
The other reality is that you more than likely had some scenes in the back of your mind when you first decided to build a layout. It doesn't matter whether scenes came from the real world, from photos of the real world, or just from photos of other layouts - you had those images in your mind. Recall which ones you really want to recreate, and then screen those scenes on the basis of what will fit on the already built layout. Don't be afraid to rearrange secondary trackage to better accommodate a desired scene. Sometimes even rearranging the main for a better scene is feasible.
Fred W
If not, (and even if so) make some temporary scenery to get a feel of what looks good and feels good. An old suggestion for temporary scenery from the pages of Model Railroader was to ball up newspaper and lash it together with masking tape as the scenery support. Overlay the newspaper with pieces or strips of brown paper grocery bags, and tape down as necessary. Hot glue might work just as well for the heavy brown paper. The brown paper gives you a color that won't jar your senses. Cardboard boxes cut to size - and painted if you want to - are good stand-ins for structures. Another method of temporary sturctures is to tape photos of the desired structure - model or prototype - onto cardboard or a box.
Step back and look at the result. Adjust or rip out and redo to better please yourself. Look carefully again in a couple of weeks while running trains, and repeat the process as necessary. Once it's what you want, you can switch to a more permanent scenery medium like plaster or whatever.
Reality is that unless you can visualize scenery that will fit and look good the 1st time - few of us can - the mockup of temporary scenery is a great way to actually try things out.
The other reality is that you more than likely had some scenes in the back of your mind when you first decided to build a layout. It doesn't matter whether scenes came from the real world, from photos of the real world, or just from photos of other layouts - you had those images in your mind. Recall which ones you really want to recreate, and then screen those scenes on the basis of what will fit on the already built layout. Don't be afraid to rearrange secondary trackage to better accommodate a desired scene. Sometimes even rearranging the main for a better scene is feasible.
Fred W