Backdrops That Reflect Heavy Industries

You should definitely look at some of the very nice commercially available backdrops.  I'm partial to Railroadbackdrops.com, but there are others out there.  They were able to take my own photo of Weirton Steel blast furnaces and turn it into a divider backdrop.

Best of luck,

George

I agree with George, though I've done business with buy-backdrop.com. They are not specialists in train backdrops, but do have a number of custom backdrops and scenes available, and will be happy to modify and print them (or use your photo) at a hard-to-beat cost.

A few years back, I got them to crop and fit one of their stock scenes on a custom-sized 9 foot by 4 foot vinyl fabric and shipped it from overseas, all for a bit more than $20. The quality was excellent, and the backdrop has held up, in spite of my roll-up installation in front of my storage shelves. Prices may have changed in the past several years, but if you can wait a few weeks for the 'slow boat', I suspect the price will still be hard to beat.

George and Steve - Thank you guys for your thoughts. I'll check out the sites you suggested. I really like your backdrops. If I could just get those mountains out of the way and see factories, stacks, cloudy skies. The other section of the layout will be for the hills and mountains. I'll share when I find what I'm looking for.

Backdropwarehouse has quite a few industrial backdrops.

Okay. Very cool. I did not realize the level of customization that was available. I have lots of photos of factories from my field trips. Perhaps I could splice them together and send them to these people to blend it together. Thanks again.

@Bill - Thanks Bill. I'll check it out

I believe backdrops, either commercial or homemade, can greatly enhance a layout, and photos and videos of trains running on a layout.

I have commercial ones purchased from Railroadbackdrops.com and homemade ones on my layout, and I like both kinds.

if you go homemade, two resources that helped me (I did not excel in art class in grade school) were Scenery for Model Railroads by Bill McClanahan and How to Build Realistic Model Railroad Scenery 3rd Edition by Dave Frary.

I also recommend acrylic paints (easy clean up with water). With acrylics, I was able to go over my initial numerous attempts painting the backdrop until I was satisfied with the result.

You may find, like I did, that selecting, creating and/or installing backdrops are highly creative activities that can be very enjoyable.

I didn’t go the heavy industry route, but the photos below show some of my commercial and homemade backdrops:

Commercial:

Homemade:

Arnold