Making my own backdrop

My second N scale layout is a temporary one so I placed it in an area that used to be a kitchen. I did not make any changes to this space, so it still has some of the kitchen facilities. That's fine except for the fact that I'd prefer to watch my trains in a more realistic setting. And instead of kitchen tiles in the background, I'd rather see some trees and the sky. Seems like I need a nice backdrop.

I could have just bought a backdrop BUT:

• I had a problem finding one that would be long enough (I needed almost 4m/13ft)
• for my temporary layout I needed a free standing backdrop, so I would need to glue it to something anyway
• they cost money... :)

And I decided to build my own. I started searching for a panoramic photo and this one caught my attention:

It's green at the bottom and blue at the top. That's what I needed. And it's available on Wikipedia (meaning: free) so it's OK to use it. The full resolution picture can be found here.

Now, how do I print it on a 4m long piece of paper? I checked the possibility of printing it at a professional studio and it's definitely doable. However:

• the cost would be almost as buying a pre-made backdrop
• it would still not get printed on anything that could act as a free standing backdrop

So again - let's improvise...

Using a PosteRazor software I divided the picture into 13 pages. I also set it to include a 1cm overlap for easier gluing together. I have to say that PosteRazor is really user-friendly and it all took me literally 5 minutes.

 

I've printed my pictures on 13 regular A3 pages. This is what they looked like after printing and cutting the top and the bottom margins.

Of course the regular printer paper is very flimsy. So I also bought A3 cards (stiff paper) to act as a base for my backdrop. And a lot of glue of course, since I was going for an area of over 1m².

I started gluing the printouts to the card base. It was not difficult at all and I wasn't even very careful with the glue assuming it would become transparent after drying.

Three pages already connected:

The base cards I bought came in A3 sized pages. So of course they needed to be connected in order to form the full panorama. I decided not to rely on gluing them together only with the printouts. Instead I glued some additional support at the back where edges of the cards meet. Unfortunately the photo does not show it very well, since it's all just white...

Here the backdrop is getting longer and I'm having a problem taking a nice photo in my living room...

The work is finished in the evening and the glue is dry the next morning. I need to move the backdrop to the garden in order to take a full picture. In the sunlight and from a distance it looks quite well.

Up close several defects are visible. The glue did not become transparent, the printouts wrinkled at their edges, and the print got damaged in several places where I bent the paper too much.

But it does not look bad when added to my layout..

And now instead of watching my trains like this:

I'm seeing them like that:

It turned out pretty good for a first try. There are several things I could have done better:

• The photo could have been printed with a better quality. I used the laser printer at my office with all the quality settings and it still does not look great.
• I should have been more careful with the glue. Or perhaps I should have used a better one. Hard to say, but I definitely have glue traces visible on my backdrop.
• I chose to print with overlapping pages so that I don't get any gaps at the edges. Looking at the result, I have to say that perhaps the connections would have been less visible if there were no overlaps. Difficult to judge without having another go...

Was it worth doing it myself? I think so. Considering my needs, the result is fully acceptable.