Tehachapi, BC

[Cajonpassfan]

Your ballasting crews are da bomb. Send them down my way to Cajon when they're done please 
Otto K.

[Santa Fe Guy]

Very neat ballasting indeed. Question, why do you ballast before scenery. I have always ballasted after scenery was done a bit like the real world I guess. Just curious.
Rod.

[GaryHinshaw]

The short answer is access.  To get the look I want (especialy the little ridge between the rails), I need to be able to brush the ballast from both sides of the track and I wouldn't be able do that in many places after the scenery is in place.  For example, the track in the foreground above is emerging from a deep cut and -- speaking for myself -- the ballast would look like crap if I applied it after the fact.  Since the ground cover adjacent to the tracks in Tehachapi is pretty much plain dirt, I'm not too worried about blending the scenery later on.

[railnerd]

Garry,
You could run your 12V bus and then modify 12v car chargers for the ipads. So the car charger does the 12v to 5V conversion.
Just be careful that Ipads need up to 2A to charge.

Also be careful, as there are some really craptacular "car chargers" out there…

-Dave

[GaryHinshaw]

I'm taking a break from technology to revisit the photo backdrops I'm planning to use on the layout.  In the summer of 2014 my son and I spent a few days on the hill shooting some panoramas, and I'm finally getting around to processing some of them and figuring out how I might be able to use them.  Here is one amusing example that I hope to be able to use in the Tunnel 10/14 area, on the left side of the main Loop shelf:



It's stitched together from about a dozen images.  Here is a link to the full-resolution version (albeit jpeg-compressed) on Picasa.  You can see quite a variety of trailer lengths in that train!  I thought I had remembered that the train was not moving when we took this series, but I guess it was.  I will crop the train out if I end up using this shot.  Overall, these shots are much better quality than the ones I took 4 years ago and have had up "temporarily" for almost exactly 3 years now.   

[Scottl]

It looks pretty good.  You could always plan another field trip for more photos...

[GaryHinshaw]

Happily, my daughter just moved from NYC to LA, so I have a built in excuse to visit southern California again soon. 

Here's another example showing the massive cement plant at the summit (full-res link):



Notice anything peculiar about it?  (I'm not sure I want a backdrop with all these buildings in it - I'm still just experimenting.)

[C855B]

... Notice anything peculiar about it? ...

Not really. Other than it's flipped backwards.

[jagged ben]

Well I had to save both of those montages, just, you know, because.

[GaryHinshaw]

Other than it's flipped backwards.

Bingo!  I knew that would be a gimme for you though.

jb, I have a dozen others in various stages of processing that I'd be happy to post.  Most of them exceed the 75 MB limit of Picasa though, so they'd probably have to go on Dropbox.

[Cajonpassfan]

jb, I have a dozen others in various stages of processing that I'd be happy to post.  Most of them exceed the 75 MB limit of Picasa though, so they'd probably have to go on Dropbox.

Gary, if I may comment, IMHO super high resolution photos are not necessarily a good thing, unless your foreground 3d modeling is super photorealistic as well. Don't get me wrong, your modeling is phenomenal, but my experience with photo backdrops tells me to tone things down, and to apply basic Photoshop "dry brush" filter to take detail out and to put texture in. Attaching a couple of shots of what works for me; ymmv. And, unless you have places to view the backdrop straight on at 90 degrees, I'd "stretch it" too, as in my previous post.
It's exciting to watch your Tehachapi layout come to life! Keep the updates coming please...
Regards,
Otto K.

[GaryHinshaw]

I tend to agree with you Otto.  The temporary versions I've had up for a while have been pretty low-res and I'm not unhappy with that.  I've put a few test prints of these new photos up on the layout and they do tend to stand out pretty dramatically, which is not really what one wants.  At this stage I am still trying to get the overall composition right, and the panoramic stitching benefits from having high-res inputs.  But once I have things composed the way I like, I'll work on a toning down the image resolution to a desirable level.

I love your examples!

[Santa Fe Guy]

Great looking backdrop Otto and I am sure yours will look just as good Gary.
Rod.

[Scottl]

I'll side on the lower resolution camp.  My previous experience with a photo backdrop convinced me that it is very difficult to bring the model scenery up to the visual equivalent of the photographs.  A lower resolution would be quite effect, and to my recall, the versions you have been using were very good in person.

GIMP and other image editing software may have some filters to experiment with to give a painted or more "imperfect" look, while still giving the convincing tonal and shape complexity to make it work as a backdrop. 

[GaryHinshaw]

Another exceptional example was @coldriver 's Oregon Trunk Line backdrop.