Making of a photo display

How to make a photo display.

To make a photo display is a easy job. It is an ideal tool for making pictures of your model trains and cars.

You can make it as simple or as complicated as you like. The most easy one is a wooden frame with a plywood back and painting it in the required color. It is nothing more or less than a box. Illumination can be placed in the top of the box to lighten up the train models and give it an extra dimension. You can easily give an extra appearance with a layout look by adding a backdrop picture of painting or by adding buildings as a backdrop. The buildings get a depth of nothing more than 2 cm. The buildings can have their own illumination. To add buildings and some scenery material, the photo display gets an extra and unique dimension. The last one is build in this example.

The frame is made of pinewood planks and a plywood back. This creates a box shaped display. Next is to give it a grey color by painting it and mount a LED strip at the top. The LED strip is covered by an aluminium angle shape profile.

The buildings for the backdrop are made of cardboard en the window frames of styrene profiles. All this is coloured in the right colors and weathered. Märklin K-rail is mounted at a foam bottom of 2.0 mm and ballast is applied with fine grit stones. The rail track has got a rust color and the ballast is weathered by using weathering powders. Both acrylic paints and weathering powders are used on all the other material in this display. A thin layer of Matted Acrylic Varnish protects as final layer the powders. Behind the wall a transformer is mounted for the LED. It convert from 230Vac to 12Vdc. If required you can add a special LED dimmer, even available with remote control. All cables are not visible.

The backdrop is painted in the colour Sand to achieve a better light distribution. The window glass is made using Kristal Klear. the benefit of this product is than when it is dry the light from the inside of the buildings is diffuse and has no effect on the final pictures. With the static grass applicator some static grass in different lengths is applied as also some bushes.