The first act of business was to build the rock bluffs that are extensions of the large and small mountains and extend to the bridge. I only had about a 3/4 of an inch between the track and the wood backdrop, so I had to make these rock bluffs pretty thin.
I first traced directly on the backdrop the basic outline that I wanted each of these bluffs to be. I then traced paper templates, and used these templates to start building my molds. I used aluminum foil to create the molds to the desired shape and depth.
I gently crinkled the foil and manipulated it with my fingers, ensuring that the grooves didn�t undercut into the plaster once I poured it. Before pouring the plaster, I coated the foil mold with 70% isopropyl alcohol to help the plaster settle. As soon as the plaster set, I removed the plaster castings. This had to be done very carefully, and as you can see, the castings broke as they were quite thin. Not a issue however as they could be glued back together.
As you can see above, I traced the template directly onto the foil whit a blue sharpie for my first mold, which then ran into the plaster, so I didn�t use this method going forward. Once these were completely dry, I glued the cracked sections together and verified how they fit on my layout.
For the backdrop, I used large sheets of foam board, which had white cardstock glued to each side. This provided a sturdy and workable surface. I made a large template out of scrap newsprint to get the shape I needed my backdrop to be, then traced it onto the foam board and cut it to shape.
I made a small sketch on paper of how I wanted the backdrop to look to make sure I had the correct look and feel (see Design & Planning page). I then drew the basic locations of the mountains, tree lines, rock bluffs, etc. and got right to work painting. I used acrylic paints from the dollar store, which worked great for this application.
I started with the sky colour, then the mountains, and last was the trees. I kept things as simple as possible for 2 reasons. First, I am not professional when it comes to painting, and second, I did a lot of research on backdrops online, and found the more simple backdrops were most effective, as they did not distract from the detailed layout scenery.
Once the backdrop was dry, I fastened it to the original backdrop with double-sided tape. I then glued the previously casted rock bluffs directly to the backdrop, and used Poly-Filler to blend them into the rest of the layout.