Model Railroading on the Cheap

Experimenting with enhanced depth perception.

    Populating the layout with people doing chores adds reality. Showing workers on the job at structures is always rewarding. For a long time I resisted using fancy store bought finely detailed people with suspenders and belt buckles because I thought they were too expensive. However after painting a couple dozen I began to change my opinion. My painted people are good enough for background quality ‘arm’s length’ viewing. We can create activity scenes around the layout that can speak to the camera if we populate them with folks involved with some kind of action.

    With the use of Woodland Scenics and LifeLike Scene Masters kits one is tempted to make well-detailed scenes. It was lots of fun doing this stuff, however the painting of the people is still a tedious chore. With some of the nice 1950s era vehicles now available it stimulates the desire for vintage vehicles and quality people on the layout.

    Some of my limited space buildings have rather shallow depth. I tried an experiment to show workers in an open door way by using a photograph in the doorway. To do this I first placed a couple people in suitable pose on the workbench and took a photo of them right at the edge of the bench with a black cardboard as background. This is tricky work but placing a floor under the people and boxes in the background help a lot. Re-sizing can be done with software in the computer. For an example of what you can do see below; the man dragging the pallet by Bay 3 is the same man at the right side of the Bay 4 door in the photograph. Almost like getting two for the price of one.

    Here we see a man with a puzzled look about himself (you may have seen him elsewhere on the layout) standing in the doorway on the railcar side of Slimm’s Freight Transfer Warehouse. This building was made with the computer Paint drawing program, printed on card stock paper, folded and glued together with a half inch thick block of wood inside to help hold the shape. This whole building illustrates ‘selective compression’ — most of the building was compressed into nonexistence!

Be sure to see later in this post where I show the photos that ‘opened’ this scene.

    It may take a few practice shots with the camera to get a feel for how sizes work in the chosen spots. Be sure to include some floor in your shot of the workers and maybe include a few boxes in the background behind the standing men. I was surprised how well this looked and worked.  This seemed to liven up the surroundings by showing some work being done, even if the men are just standing around.

    Sometimes we modelers can use illusion to some extent, at times more than others trying to make something look bigger or better than it really is. Here is the effort of experimenting with forced perspective or depth enhancement. These pages show some of the results, that I feel are rewarding. I placed figures in front of a black Foam Core card background on the white Formica top workbench. Then took a close photograph, printed and trimmed it to fit the doorway, and pasted it over the door.  The door instantly becomes open!  We can see on the next page some of the results and how it was done.

Depth Details

    Here is how I got the photo of the figures on the work bench that produced the workmen seen here at the Freight Transfer building. After this photo is printed, just cut away the background with scissors and paste the subject over the doorway. This experiment worked well and I feel proud.