3.12.2011

Backdrop...and New Additions

I completed my 'stormy sky' backdrop last month and today I decided to add in the mountain landscape.  This was a nice break from ballasting and wiring!
Painting backdrops is somewhat counter-intuitive as objects further away are 'lighter' than the landscape closer to you...
I go back and forth on how well I've done on this...sometimes it looks a bit too....turquoise?   And than sometimes it looks perfect.  I'm not sure (sitting here looking at the photos also makes me think the color is not quite what is actually on the wall either).  I may airbrush a bit more Tamiya 'cloud gray' over the landscape further in the background to get more of 'misty' look and have it so that the mountain range furthest away is almost impossible to differentiate from the sky.  More to come.
On some other fun news....I've been looking to find a Nederlandse Spoorswegen Koploper for a long time.  As it would turn out, I was able to find not only one, but another version in the same week! I found two great gentlemen on the Dutch Marketplaats site  (forget eBay if your looking for model trains from the Netherlands...clearly all the Dutch use Marketplaats instead...which is hard for us non-Dutch speakers as the process is different than the universal eBay experience!) who were willing to package and ship to the USA!  So not only did I get a traditional Koploper in the NS colors (and its the recent version with the NEM 651 interface), I was also able to get an even more rare (at least to me) version in the KLM colors!
I installed the decoders in the two Koplopers today, in addition to finally getting my Graham Farish Class 150 Central Lines DMU working (more on that later) and digitized, which you can see in the below photo to the left.  Of course, the two EMU's in the center are the Koplopers.
Yes, with trains on the layout...trying to take a break from switch-wiring, ballasting, and some of the more challenging tasks associated with layout building, and taking a little time to enjoy the trains!


11 comments:

  1. Those are nice looking locomotives! Very distinctive look. Although after reading the wikipedia article, I'm surprised more EMU sets aren't built that way; a through gangway makes so much sense.

    The backdrop looks a bit too tourquoise to me from your photo, but photos can be misleading. And the real world often varies quite a bit just depending on clouds and other things. Anyway, if it looks "right" to you then it's right.

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  2. Amazing work on the backdrop. Looks very Japanese.

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  3. hello,

    I find the various reliefs well represented .. The clouds are also well done. Maybe a little more color a dark green to the front.
    But the photo gives you it's true color?

    Congratulations Jerry anyway

    greetings

    Pascal

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  4. I think the backdrop is fantastic. You are right, I believe, to want to draw the clouds down over the furthest mountains, but the result will be quite good.

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  5. Hey Jerry. I love how all the different trains look together in your railway terminus. I can't stop admiring all the cool colors! I'm also impressed with your artistic skills. The clouds on your backdrop look amazing!

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  6. Nice work on the backdrop, its very atmospheric... it has kind of an epic feel about it!

    The GF 150 is very familiar... it is a local lad around these parts!

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  7. Excellent paintings. I'm not very good at this kind of pictures so I have to buy some backdrops from faller or Vollmer. Keep the good work. I'll continue to follow with great curiosity.
    Mário

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  8. Class 150 is awesome.
    I steal your backdrop idea, my gf is very good at drawing.

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  9. Thanks everyone for the kind compliments and helfpul tips. As you may have seen from my following post to this, I took some of the feedback and was able to improve it!

    And yes, that GF Class 150 is a neat looking little locomotive! More on that in a future post!

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  10. Why is whenever I use google to NScale stuff your layout comes up. Lol. Great back drop.


    Spiff

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  11. LOL, I have no idea! For a while there was a website that was ripping off some of my blog posts (which is bizarre) that was getting some search results too, but it seems like its gone now!

    Yeah, I don't know, but it does the same thing when I search for stuff!!!

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