Entry posted by D869
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... or maybe plaice!
It's been bugging me for a while that South Yard has a rather dull backscene. It's also a bit low now that the new lighting rig is in position so I've been thinking about doing something about it.
Now South Yard is a real place in Plymouth (or rather Devonport, Stoke Damerel or 'Dock' depending on how old fashioned you want to be). The name refers to the southern half of the Royal Naval dockyard and my layout is set just outside the dockyard wall. Having done a spot of research originally using an OS map, I noticed that there are some quite nice views of Plymouth Sound and the Cremyll peninsula to be had not far away from my setting so I thought that something along these lines would make for a nicer backscene.
So in an idle moment a week or two back I started plodding around the area on Google Streetview to see if I could get the right perspective for my backscene. To cut a long story short, I can't. There is a hill in the way with an old garrison built into it - now a housing estate but a road leads down close to the dockyard wall and terminates on a quay. It's possible to drive Streetview down there and look out over the harbour. Cue the first set of screenshots. These also show the very edge of the old roofed slip inside the dockyard. I've been trying to figure out how to get this into the backscene but I don't think it will fit with the yard wall.
In my notional world the station is near to the brow of the hill allowing the viewer to look over the top and see the harbour beyond so the quayside views are too low down. I found some views from a road on Mount Wise which are from a higher elevation - probably too high and not quite in the right place. Cue the second set of screenshots.
Some cropping and stitching together with Gimp followed, then scaling to (roughly) the right width and printing onto two bits of A4 so that the result could be tried out on South Yard. I slightly squished the high angle photos vertically as a quick way to simulate a slightly lower viewpoint. The prints are black and white as recommended by Martin Goodall in his MRJ article on the Burford backscenes... also because the printer is playing up when used in colour mode.
The photos were tried out at various heights to see what looked best. Here are the results...
From the quayside - right location but too low down...
A promising start if you ignore the white van etc!
Lower is perhaps better
From Mount Wise - higher up but not quite the right location. I also seem to have clobbered the coal yard office...
Too high and distracting
I quite like this one
I like this one too - on the plus side it puts the end of the bridge in the sky but it loses some interesting parts of the waterside on the left.
The eventual backscene will be a painted affair based on a combination of the two images - the viewpoint from the quay but with the perspective from the higher angle. One conundrum is how to deal with the edges where the backscene meets the road bridge and yard wall. Keeping the horizon low will solve the road bridge problem but the yard wall is a more tricky proposition.
It remains to be seen how successful I am at turning these ideas into a real painted backscene.
EDIT: I thought it would be good to see what effect the backscene has on South Yard's role as 'photo plank'. Here are the results. Perhaps a little distracting in the straight side-on view but not too bad otherwise... and I can always keep the plain backscene as a standby.
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