Forced Perspective

[Aerojet]

Many of us have gone thru ages of making / running / tearing down and rebuilding our pikes. Over the ages one accumulates a lot of buildings which seem to rotate thru our pikes. And if you are like me, you have changed gauges, from HO to N and back to HO.

So what do you do with those old N buildings? You could just toss them, but then I am a real Scrooge and hate to throw anything which I might be able to use later on. The River pass did not allow me to use much, although with this new project coming up and I do have a full upper left quarter which is not finished ......

A pike like this is obviously 4 x 8, and you can see all the way across it. Well now two 4 x 8's -- actually one 5 x 8 and one 4 x 8 joined together -- so -- how do you make it look deeper? '

Forced prospective.

The buildings in front are HO, and the ones wayyy in the back are N ... Like that.

There is a rear switch and spur on the new layout, and back there behind a ridge of plaster cloth there is going to be another industrial area. EXCEPT those buildings are going to be "smaller" -- like the grain elevator, and the milling plant. You won't see them much due to the ridge, but you know what they are. So seeing cars over there might be hard -- which is okay.

In the end, experimenting with N houses on the River Pass finished part, it looks like it is miles away, when it is only 3 feet. Add lots of trees and other details like that and you have a really deep pike without the extra building of scenery.

Any one else try this? Or using it?

I know about "half buildings" along a back drop and using them to add a "front to the back drop". Just this is new wrinkle to me and something I wanted to try out, first on the existing and now planning into the new pike ...

Your thoughts?

The Aerojet

 

[montanan]

I have some very good model railroading friends that I regularly visit in Missouri who have used N scale buildings. One is a huge layout taking up his entire basement and he really did a good job with them. I can't do that myself as most of my layout is a shelf layout and I don't have enough depth to do this. Tried it as I had a large N scale layout before moving on to HO scale and still had some old buildings around. Like I said, noot enough depth to make it work.

When done correctly, it sure make a difference and makes a layout look a lot larger than it really is.

 

[Aerojet]

I guess, an addition to this mornings post - Recycling old buildings.

I have tons from the past, and here are a few of them. The first up I think is a Grant Line station. When i got this thing in 1984, I thought I was going go nuts trying to build this. A box, basically with a bunch of "sticks" a few sheets of siding, wooden, and a few sheets of thin cardboard --- and a set of blueprints. Most complex thing I have ever built. I thought it turned out well, and when the old pike went away, this went up on the shelf. Now it will be back down here in that first "loop" down front. See A + B = sub for the B part ...

Front and back - just plopped down on the current pike to shoot this photo. I needs a coat of paint, and I think that is reefer yellow, if I remember. I know I did not use some exotic color, but common RR color for future reference. Now I can't remember what it was ...

ON the current pike is this odd looking building from the 80's as well ...

AND if you think that it refers to the Bachman train people, it does. In some way I remember this being some kind of anniversary building they put out. Do not remember the exact year - but found it digging thru old HO stuff and found a place for it here ...

Another thing which got pretty well beat up and I wasn't so sure I wanted to use it, but in the end decided to rebuild the unit with a new model and this is the second one on my pikes ...

The original one was too close to the tracks and got hit several times by wrecks and was pretty much totaled. Rather than try to fix the thing at some point I decided to just toss and rebuild a new one. So here tis --

This is the forced prospective experiment on the current pike ...

Just grabbed the first one out of the box and plopped it down here. That man should give you the scale, as well as that 3 inch high box behind it. Right now it is sitting over on the ridge between the tracks by tunnel 1 and 2. Will be moving to the top of the hill in the next work session over there with the 5 houses as well ...

Just a few ideas, and some of the past.

Like the old units?

The Aerojet