Simple dioramas

[kirtleypete]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this as it doesn't really fit neatly anywhere but here goes anyway. 

 

People have been making small dioramas for photographing and displaying models for years, of course, but hopefully I can add a new slant to it which makes construction very cheap and simple. 

 

B&Q sell shelves 2' long for under a fiver, for which you get a wooden shelf with nicely bevelled edges, some brackets and screws. Putting the brackets and screws to one side to use for something else, I use two of these shelves glued and pinned together in an 'L' shape to make a small diorama for photographing my 0 gauge models...naturally the same idea can be used for any scale. 

 

 

Using the B&Q shelves gives two flat pices of wood without needing any measuring or cutting, and 2' is a convenient size which is big enough but not unwieldy or heavy. They do longer shelves too, of course, but for my use these are ideal. 

 

All I did was glue and pin the two pieces of wood together, then lay a length of Peco track. A piece of ID Backscenes backdrop that I had spare was glued to the upright piece of wood and then the track was ballasted and the grass was added, using static grass fibres sprinkled onto diluted PVA using my fingers. Finally some Greenscene flowers were added following a misting with Spraymount glue. That's all there is to it...however when it was taken outside and stood on a table in my back garden this is what I was able to achieve:

 

 

 

Obviously the bottom edge needs trimming to get rid of the edge of the diorama in the bottom corner. 

 

Having built one, I decided to produce some more scenes......see what you think. 

 

 

 

The Terraced houses are from one of my own backscene packs, and they make what is basically the same thing look entirely different. The whole scene is only 6" wide. 

Because the dioramas are portable they can be taken outside and the pictures taken in natural light which always looks best, ideally on a bright but cloudy day to avoid shadows on the backscene.

 

This is the third one...

 

 

And this is the fourth.

 

 

 

 

The only drawback is that the shelves aren't wide enough for a double tracked scene in 7mm scale, but other than that I'm very pleased with them. One thought is to do scenes set in different seasons, something you might nor want to do on the whole layout but which could be fun on a diorama.

 

There's nothing ground breaking or original here, just an idea that you might find useful.

 

Peter

[BG John]

I was thinking of making one with mixed gauge track (16.5mm, 18.2mm, 28.08mm & 32mm) for my 4mm and 7mm scale models, with scenery to 5.5mm scale that looked OK in either scale I work in. It would take up a lot less space than building lots of them! I suppose the backscene could be hinged, so they fold flat to save space.

[kirtleypete]

Following on from what I said about the seasons, I can't find any backscenes with Autumn colours which seesm odd. ID Backscenes do a set of snow covered hills which is nice. I'd have expected Autumn to be popular - does anyone know of any backscenes that I may have missed?

Peter

[The White Rabbit]

I've not come across any myself but like the idea. My last autumn diorama only had a plain sky backscene. 

 

If you were wondering about using any photos to generate a print, then if we have anything suitable, e-mail me and I can have a look. 

 

Cheers,

 

Simon

[kirtleypete]

It was just a general thought really - I e-mailed John at ID Backscenes and he says no one has asked him before!

 

Peter