[The upper ridge has been roughed in and still needs a lot of shaping. The lower ridge has been cut back a bit near where the tunnel portals will be installed.]
I decided to go with a small ridge behind the upper level track, shorter than the Rocky Ridge depot. The ridge won't be extended behind the depot so as not to make it appear artificially boxed in by a wall of rock. The ridge was kept because I realized that E. L. Moore had used it as a visual device to help make the transition from the layout to the background painting.
Albert Jackson and David Day's The Modelmaker's Handbook from 1981 has a rather nice illustration of the technique of using flats like the Rocky Ridge to make the transition from the layout to the background.
I bought my copy of their book from an online used book seller a couple years back for, I think, less than $10. It's a great compendium of model building techniques and includes chapters on vehicles, figures, dioramas, model railroads, engines and radio control models. It's the excellent and extensive use of illustrations - supplemented by many b&w and colour photos - that make this book outstanding. An inside page credits the illustrations to Robin Harris, photographs to David Strickland, art editing to Pauline Faulks, and art direction to Debbie Mackinnon.
It seems that most of the old model making books I buy online are castoffs from public libraries. On the one hand, I find the mass divestiture of library holdings troubling because I recall many happy hours spent finding and reading books like these and others at the public library near my parent's house, but I realize times have changed and people aren't interested in this subject or in book-based libraries. All I can say is all knowledge isn't available on the internet even though it may seem that way, and for what's there, handling the information on a laptop, tablet or phone gives a very different impression of the material than when seen, held and read in an actual, physical book.
ELM's large tunnel entrance on the far left side that allows the lake somewhere to go--- just seemed too big to me. I'm wondering whether on yours you might opt for a smaller culvert, stone perhaps, putting ballast around it and some low foliage. It wouldn't hide the water's outlet, but it would downplay it so people up at the Rocky Ridge Depot wouldn't wonder if the ground was going to collapse under them. Then up at the depot, perhaps use background layers to suggest the entrance to trackside comes from behind with a proper road or trail; it'd be difficult to connect it into the town in front of it.
ReplyDeleteI also thought that stone portal over the lake's feeder stream to be odd. I wonder if it's a remnant of some other idea he had, but changed his mind at some point and then was stuck with the large tunnel entrance. Thanks for the ideas!
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