The upper level of my two-level layout is all narrow gauge, depicting a portion of the former Denver & Rio Grande Western’s Fourth Division line in southwestern Colorado and northern New Mexico.
Painting the Backdrop
Although my railroad room is on the small side – only 13 feet by 16 feet, I have 40 linear feet of painted backdrop, with another 10 feet yet to paint behind my Chama scene. The only modeling task that has scared me more than backdrop painting, is painting and reassembling a brass steam locomotive, praying that it will run again. That said, with no formal art training, I have painted most of those 40 linear feet myself, and I am satisfied with the result. A backdrop that extends the foreground scenery has a profound effect on the visual impact of a model railroad.
This page documents my recent push to add another 15 feet of backdrop painting, which I documented with a lot of photos. However, before I could even start, I had to repair an unsightly failed joint in the hardboard sky backdrop. That’s where this story begins.
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 Before April 2020, the painted backdrop ended abruptly to the left of Lobato trestle, just above the unfinished Monero scene. |  Prior to restarting the backdrop painting, I had to repair a 6” crack that developed at a joint in the hardboard backdrop. The drywall mud cracked open and was delaminating from the double-sided scenery divider. To complicate matters, the blue sky paint was my own blend, and both the paint and the blend’s recipe were long gone. My best option was to paint a mountain over the future repair, so color-matching the sky wasn’t necessary. |  After much thought (“gedenken experiments”) about the repair, I settled on injecting diluted carpenter’s glue into the crack using a syringe, followed by clamping to apply pressure and close the crack. A piece of plastic wrap against the backdrop prevented the rigid clamping surface (a sheet of see-through acrylic and a scrap of lumber) from becoming glued to the fragile cracked drywall mud. After curing, the clamp was released and the plastic wrap was carefully peeled away. It worked!!! |  I wanted much of the backdrop to resemble the hills and ridges just west of the C&TS tracks from Cumbres Pass to Chama. First, I took multiple photographs of the sky backdrop and printed them out in B&W. Then, using photos of those ridges taken on my last C&TS ride, I sketched out the hills and ridges on the printed photos to better visualize how they might look. Once satisfied, I penciled in the ridge tops on the backdrop and got started with the painting. |
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 Here the mesa behind Monero and the foreground ridge above Toltec City has been started, using greens and patches of browns. Color photos from the C&TS and the sketch helped create the shape and colors for this scene. |  Here’s my palette and a flat brush used for applying the green tube acrylic paint. The greens are for green meadows and background under evergreens; the browns are for dry meadows and rocky soils. It’s important for both colors to appear on the slopes. |  The colors of the mesa above Monero appeared a little patchy due to less-than-perfect blending of greens and browns, but after tress are added, the patchiness disappears. The basalt cap rock has been added, and the road in the scenery has been extended onto the backdrop, which quickly curves behind the painted outcrop. Painting a manmade feature like a road straight into a backdrop, is always a difficult task due to the viewing perspective. I advise having it curve out of sight when possible. |  Above Toltec City, I’ve painted the nearby ridges (suggesting those above Coxo on the C&TS) which are primarily meadows and rock outcrops, with clumps of conifers. I took more time blending the greens and browns, while both paints were still wet, and occasionally dipping my brush in water to help thin and blend the paints on the backdrop. |
 I’ve added evergreens trees or conifers to the mesa, by stippling the end of a flat brush in the dark green paint, and creating a vertical representation of a tall thin spruce or fir. Small trees (more distant) were made with a #2 flat; larger, closer trees with a #4 or #6 flat brush. I used a different shade of green and a #2 round brush to simulate aspens. The nearby trees by the road were painted darker and larger, using a round brush. |  I’ve started adding trees on the nearby slopes above Toltec City. |  Here the trees are finished above Toltec City, with conifers on the ridge tops and aspens on the lower slopes. I added more trees later to the ridge to better match the hills above Coxo, where there were both isolated conifers and areas of timber. |  Further to the left, I began painting successive ridges while simulating greater distance, by blending white and a trace of blue to my basic paint colors. The further left, the more distant the ridge needs to appear to be. |
 Trees have been added to more distant ridges. The big rock outcrop in the upper left is where the crack in the backdrop was located. Should the repair fail, I can repair and paint over it with colors other than sky. |  Trees are finished on mid-distant ridges; to the left, the most distant ridges are next for painting trees. |  Now adding conifers to the tops of the most distant ridges. I was not happy with the color of the brownish meadows, so later I repainted those meadows to a less intense color. Goofs can always be fixed! |  Painting aspen trees on the lower slopes of the more distant ridges is complete, and depth has been added. I plan to make aspens, plant them above the rock castings and blend them into the backdrop. |
 The backdrop above Monero and Toltec City is now complete. Time to finish the scenery and build the town. |
I am not an artist by any means – I think I had my last “art class” in 7th grade. However, I have spent a lot of vacations hiking out west and observing nature – as well as taking lots of landscape photos and learning what types of trees grow at what elevations and under what conditions. I have been inspired by Greg Gray’s backdrops, seen on several layouts in the St Louis area; Greg is a true artist. I got my start thanks to John Scherr, a friend and fellow member of the Mudhens; John showed me the basic materials, tools, and techniques and then painted the first 7 feet of backdrop above my Cumbres Pass scene in about 2000. I painted the next 18 feet a few years later. This last 15 feet was painted in April and May of 2020.
The backdrop is 1/8” hardboard, curved around the corners in the finished room, with the joints filled with drywall mud. The sky was painted years ago, a latex blue interior house paint, with the lower half painted a lighter blue after mixing in white to lighten the sky near the horizon. I used some of John’s preferred tube acrylics from Liquitex and other suppliers, especially greens (Viridian Hue, Sap Green, Opaque oxide of chromium), browns (Raw Sienna, Raw Umber), blue (Phthalo Blue), Mars Black and Titanium White. My main tools are #2, 4 and 6 flat brushes, #2 round brush, a plastic paint palette, palette knife and a jar of water for wetting the brush and blending colors already applied to the backdrop. I have learned by experimentation how to simulate some depth to the mountain scenes, but I do not know how to add shadows, so I don’t try. I have made many goofs, but the great thing is, you can paint over the mistakes and try again!