The Thomaston section has been sitting on my workbench for nearly two years, but I recently moved it back into the train room after finishing the masonite backdrop on the first two walls. The sky is blended using two Benjamin Moore colors: "aqua marina" at the top blending into "jet stream" at the bottom. I applied bands of each using brushes and then blended them with a roller leaving a smooth finish with some streakiness suggesting wispy clouds near the horizon. Later on I will add photo images of trees and other landscape details.
The backdrop sits on the shelf brackets and isn't actually attached to anything, just sandwiched between the layout and the wall. I glued 3/4" styrofoam panels to the back of the backdrop in between the shelving standards so that it stands an even distance from the wall all the way around. Screwing the layout sections to the shelf brackets locks everything in place.
Getting the first section back in place motivated me to work on the second section, which is a largely rural area with no sidings. The open-frame benchwork for this section had already been constructed using my usual technique of a 1/2" birch plywood frame and top covered with 2" foam. One thing I learned when building the first section is to avoid having corner curves cross a section boundary, so I added a small extension to accommodate the entire curve in this corner.
Ultimately the layout will extend along the right-hand wall to a quarry and harbor scene, but for now I plan to install a staging yard to allow me to run trains in and out of Thomaston.
