I couldn't see the forest due to the trees

How does that old saying go? "One step forward, two steps back."

That is exactly how I'm feeling right now, but I think it will be worth the trouble in the end. After painting the trees at the entrance of the yard, I let them sit for a few days to see if I liked the look. While I was happy with what I had created, something was still bothering me. A few nights later, that "something" finally revealed itself: I wasn't thinking far enough ahead.

When I painted trees on the backdrop around the main layout, I did it so that when I eventually "planted" 3D trees, you wouldn't be able to see a solid blue background through the branches.  

In the following images, you can see that after painting the background trees, I finished the basic ground cover. The actual scenery base comes next (I haven't finished it yet).

 

I did manage to get some trees made and planted behind the Ruston depot scene. As you can see, looking through the 3D trees doesn't reveal a solid blue sky all the way to the ground. In my opinion, this gives the scene much more depth.

So, I decided to continue painting trees across most of the yard’s backdrop, just as I had elsewhere. My plan was to stop the painted trees, add an AI-rendered building at the end, and then start a line of AI-rendered and printed trees. These were meant to extend all the way around the yard's backdrop, with a few breaks here and there.

My thought was to place a printed building partially over the painted trees and partially behind the printed trees, which hopefully would create a forced perspective and add some depth. However, after looking at the building flanked by painted trees on the left and printed trees on the right for several nights, I realized that was exactly what was bothering me. I removed the building before taking this photo, but you can still get the idea.  There was just too much of a difference.

The main issue here was space. Unlike the other parts of the layout where I could plant 3D trees in front of the painted ones, the yard has no room between the rearmost track and the backdrop for physical trees.

This is why I was looking into printing photos of trees and buildings in the first place—I just simply got ahead of myself. I realized I needed to remove the painted trees at the yard entrance. I tried painting over just the trees, but since some of the clouds were behind them, I decided to bite the bullet and entirely repaint that section of the backdrop.

A couple of nights and two coats of blue paint later, the deed was done. Of course, I then spent another night repainting the clouds, but they turned out better—a bit more transparent and fluffier than before.

With that settled and behind me, I focused on the AI tree line. I've played around with 2D drawings and photos before, but I'd never attempted to use them for a backdrop. The idea for the tree line actually came to me while I was experimenting with AI to create backdrop buildings. At one point, I wanted trees in front of the buildings, and I really liked what Gemini produced, even if it was just a visual experiment at the time.  Mind you, this is 100% AI

So I fired up Gemini again and started playing with the command prompts, which really are the key to AI. I asked it to render a tree line for a model train layout and had it add a solid blue sky with no gradient, adjusting the shade several times until it looked right. After tweaking a few specific keywords, it gave me this:

Once I converted it to a JPG, I used an eraser editing tool to remove almost all the blue sky so I wouldn't waste ink during printing.

Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures in the proper sequence because I was so focused on the task at hand. But if you look closely, you can see the printed blue sky is slightly darker than the painted backdrop.

While pondering how to remedy this, I continued to search YouTube videos and found a modeler who had already solved the problem.  Basically, after the glued images were dry, he went back with the same backdrop paint and carefully blended it onto the edges of the images. Voila! Simple and effective.  If you look closely you can see the printed sky in the first image, in the second image the transition is barely noticeable.

  

Trees at the entrance of the yard

With the clouds finished I decided to get on with the trees.

On the left end of the yard where it connects to the layout, there is a 6' section of backdrop that I want to try and transition into the yard.  I started out painting the trees the same way and the same height as they are on the backdrop behind Winnfield.  I painted them about 2/3rds across.  At this point I think I'm going to add my first building then start painting larger trees.  I'm hoping this is going to help show some forced perspective.

This time before painting them, I had the forethought to record the progress unlike last time.

I started the tree line using the dark green that I used when I painted the previous trees, it's basically a Hunter Green and serves only to give me a base to build off of.

The next step was to stipple black paint, which is used to give depth to the trees and act like shadows.

Once this is done and dry, I used two shades of green craft paint.  A Dark Forest Green and a Medium Green.  I mixed a small amount of the Medium green just to lighten the Forest Green up a touch.

This also helps to mute the black so it isn't so stark.  At this point, the shape of the trees are starting to show up.

Next I used straight Medium Green and stippled it over most of the tree shapes, but since I want the sunlight coming from the upper left, I tried to keep most of this color from the middle to left side of each tree.

Now comes the fun part and where the trees start looking like trees.  Using the Medium Green I mixed a small amount of yellow in for a lighter green.  This I tried to keep to the left most side of each tree clump.  This is where the sunlight is starting to hit the leaves, making them a bit more bright.

Finally, I continued to add the Yellow to the green from the previous color.  I didn't want the leaves to look too Yellow, so the previous green gave me a subdued greenish yellow and just enough to highlight the leaves and show a pronounced shape of individual trees.

Too much yellow and the effect will look ruined.  It's hard to tell, but the colors do darken a bit as they dry.  Sometimes it's good to stop and give the colors a chance to dry which tells you if you need more or less color.

With this stage done, I sat the backdrop back into place.  As in the yard, there is no space between the track and backdrop to plant full 3D trees, so I think I'm going to use a small amount of poly fiber covered with some darker ground foam and place it along the backdrop to hopefully hide the line where the backdrop meets the surface. 

Truth be told, the entire painting process only required about an hour of my time.

Clouds over Biddle yard

Clouds were the first thing on the agenda for the backdrop behind Biddle yard.

These were made with an airbrush and stencils, pretty much as I had done on the rest of the layout. Except this time, I used my new Paasche double-action brush. Instead of using the cheap craft paint as I've done previously, I tried something different. After using Tamiya paint on the new tracks at DuBach and liking how it sprayed, I decided to try Tamiya for the clouds. I have to say, it was easy to use, easy to clean up, and had hardly any smell.

Here is what I've been looking for the past several years.

Here are the backdrops sat back into place with the clouds.

I have not painted any clouds on the small angled portion of the backdrop for now as I plan to hang a diagram of the yard on that one.  However, I suppose I could just keep the clouds a bit lower?

The next stage will be printing the buildings and applying them to the backdrop. But first, I'm going to play around with resizing them so they look proportional to the scene.  If I recall correctly, they should be printed around 20% to 30% smaller to give a slight appearance of distance?

Planning the Biddle Yard backdrop

Not much has happened on the layout for the first half of this year.  Mainly due to me jumping feet first into operations and making a lot of small adjustments to JMRI.  As evidence from the last session on May 9th (the previous post), I think I've finally got a good handle on it as it seems to be working pretty much the way I've had it envisioned.  Cars are moving smoothly to all the industries in a fairly random pattern.  I'm also getting a pretty random amount and types of cars moving.  So I feel it's time to get back to the layout.

However I'm finding that I'm struggling trying to find the motivation to work on a few things.  I had planned to paint up four more locos in the Blue and & White scheme and/or start working on another scene on the layout between DuBach and El Dorado, but I just can't find the motivation to start on these projects.

The other night while staging the layout for another op session, I was looking at the yard and all I could see was the 16' long blue backdrop. Ugh!  I got to thinking this might be a fairly easy project to tackle, nothing real fancy just some paint and some backdrop buildings?

The more I thought about it the more I started leaning to picking up more of the 2d printed background buildings like I did from Trackside Flats.

Not 100% sure how I wanted to tackle this as it was going to cost a decent amount for these buildings.  I had a couple choices.  I could buy what I needed from them already printed and mounted on black foam core and mount them to the backdrop.  I could also buy all the buildings on two large sheets, cut them out and mount them myself to foam core or glue them directly to the backdrop?  Or I could buy several premade backdrops, cut out the sky and just glue them to my backdrop.

I had envisions of having buildings running from one end to the other or space them out with some painted trees.   But that would entitle 16' of printed buildings and that could ensure that I'd spend some coin to do this.  Plus not sure how to layout the buildings to make the backdrop look plausible?

Somewhere along the line, a little voice in my head spoke up and told me to go look at the actual location.  Hmmm?  So I jumped on Google Maps and looked up Little Rock, AR.  Snooped around until I found Biddle yard.  It's pretty much intact yet as UP is still using it but the engine facility is pretty much gone, but you can still see the old roundhouse and tracks.

Right away the first thing I noticed was the overall shape of the yard.  If you compare the aerial to a plan of my yard it almost fits perfectly.

Using the engine facility on my yard as an anchor point, I noticed that where I am standing when running the yard, I would be standing where all the trees are located just to the south of the actual yard.  On where the backdrop would be, I noticed another line of trees that separated the yard from the south edge of Little Rock.  I'm sure that back in 1979, those large buildings were not there yet and the tree line was probably thicker?

But this got me thinking and I started using my modelers license.  Instead of lining the entire 16' of backdrop with 2d buildings, why not just use trees, much like I have with the biggest share of the rest of the layout?  But I got to thinking: "Maybe that would not look good as then, no matter where you looked, you'd see a tree line all the way around the layout?"  It might be a bit too much?

Then that little voice spoke up again.

What if I painted a solid (or pretty much a solid) tree line along the backdrop, then add some taller buildings BEHIND the tree line?  The trees would hide a lot of the shorter buildings, but the taller ones could peek above the trees, using less buildings?

I went back to Google Maps and started taking a closer look.  I dropped the little guy onto the highway bridge overlooking the yard.  The first thing I noticed was that large building behind the trees.  Granted, I'm thinking this image was taken in very early Spring as the trees are just starting to leaf out.  But once the leaves totally fill in, it should hide the biggest share of anything to the north of the tree line?  

The first image is a view off the highway looking N/NE, the second image is from the east of the yard looking W/SW.  Those trees are pretty tall?

One can see the building back there in these views.  But once the leaves fill out, you may not be able to see much at all?  So I chewed on this for a while.

The next day at work, my mind started wandering.  Instead of buying a bunch of building flats, I wondered if Google Gemini could lend a hand?  When I got home I sat down and pulled up Gemini and asked it to render me a very large metal sided building about 2 stories tall.  Color it a two tone tan, with the darker color on the bottom half.  After a bit of fiddling it gave me this:

Since I wanted trees in the foreground, I didn't want to use printed trees due to the fact that the blue sky  showing through (if any) would have to match the color on the backdrop.  And I didn't want to go through the images and cut out the areas, so I decided I would paint the trees, much like I have on the rest of the layout.

This beckons back to the old argument of do I use a printed backdrop or a painted backdrop.  Do I want my eyes drawn away from my layout and onto the backdrop, or do I want the backdrop to just be there but not the main focus?

Painting the trees would do two things, I feel it would keep my eyes being drawn to the backdrop and it would also keep the look matching the rest of the backdrop around the layout.  Painting it would be!

Using the image that Gemini gave me of the big building, I asked it to render a line of trees in the foreground, but only about 2/3rds as tall as the building.  Again after a few adjustments to the wording, it gave me this:

The little voice cheered!

Now I had a good visual representation of what I wanted to do, and the way I've painted the previous trees on my backdrop I had a good idea of what I could do.  However I got to thinking, these trees are going to be a little closer than any of the others which meant I was going to have to make them a bit more detailed and I would probably have to trunks to make it look close to the image.  I think I can do this?

I took one of the 2D flats I purchased and decided to sacrifice it for the cause.  Figuring that the paint might soak into the image and ruin it, I sprayed it down with several light coats of a matte finish in a rattle can to hopefully seal it.

If I actually do this, I will NOT apply the images to black foam core, but will instead print the image on cardstock, then glue that to the actual backdrop.

Then I applied a thin coat of dark green that I've used on my "Distant Hills".

Next, I used some latex paint that was close to a tree trunk color and simply sketched in some trunks.

What I didn't take images of was the process of adding the stipple black blotches for shadow and applying the different shades of greens, starting with a darker green then working towards the lighter shades and ending up with an almost yellowish green to represent sunlit leaves.  But you can get a good idea with this image.

Here it's sitting in the yard against the backdrop.  I might have to adjust the height as it might be a little tall?

Now to see if I can bring this idea to fruition.

Op Session: May 9th, 2026

I had another great session tonight!  This one had a few firsts with it.

This was the first session held with a newer tweaked version of JMRI that Dave C. has been helping me with.  I was having a few minor issues, basically trying to balance the flow of cars.  I think we're another step closer.

A HUGE thanks out to you Dave!

This was the first session that included the all new track work in DuBach, happy to reply everything ran reliably.  

Another first was a few newcomers to join us this evening.  Dave, Jeff and Mike from Spring Creek Hobbies, Bruce H and Mark H.  This was also a first time in quite a while that Willie B was able to join us again.

This session was also informative as it confirmed to me several things about my layout and my Ops plan.

• I think 6 operators will be the optimal number per session, although I think I could squeeze in as many as 8 and it could still work.
• The trains all ran with no hiccups, my instructions seemed to be clear enough to all with not much explanation needed. 
• I didn't have many of the guys standing around waiting for something to do, with the exception of the Malvern jobs, they got done quickly and proficiently by Mike, but that also gave us a little time to sit and chew the fat while the other crews dropped off cars for Malvern and got out of the way.
• Proved for sure that both Winnfield locals could run at the same time.
• Proved that the second two through trains could traverse the layout while BOTH of the Winnfield locals were working on the layout.
• It seemed to work well having one crew do double duty: being the yard hostler and the crew for the ICG interchange.
• The overall time still stayed at about 2.5 to 3 hrs. 

All in all, a great session.  Sure feels good to get some of these unknowns answered.

Now on to some photos of the crews during the session.

First, lets meet the crew (L to R): Mark, Dave, Jeff, Willie, Mike and Bruce 

Jeff is working the Malvern AM

Mike is holding up with #34, the first SB through train at El Dorado waiting for Dave
to arrive with the #35 NB through train

Mark is working to get the NB Winnfield local ready to go while Bruce is in charge of the SB Winnfield local as he leaves the yard.

Mike is doing a roll by inspection while Dave brings the NB into El Dorado

Willie is trying to explain to Bruce that he is actually doing his work.
But I don't think Mark is buying it?

Both local crews are getting started
Mike and Dave are in Winnfield with the NB
Willie and Bruce are in Haskell with the SB

Finishing up their work in Winnfield

Wrapping up their work in Haskell

After Willie and Bruce move out of Haskell,
Jeff starts working the interchange at Haskell with the Malvern AM turn

Mike and Dave take a break as Mark brings the third through freight north through DuBach

The next three pics show a busy scene as both locals are trying to get their
work done in El Dorado

If you look closely, both locals are still in El Dorado as Mark is waiting just north of town for the tracks to clear up so he can bring the last SB through freight through El Dorado.

Mike is putting the finishing touches on his chores in El Dorado.
Soon he'll head north to his next stop: Fordyce.

Mike and Dave are working Ozark Irrigation in Fordyce, one more town before beans.

Putting the final cars in place in El Dorado

Mike and Dave have reached Little Rock.
Mark is waiting to receive their train on track 2,
while Willie and Bruce continue there journey south, working DuBach. 

 You guys all did a great job,  Ya'll come back now, ya hear!