I print my own railroad backdrops from images that I google. Here I show roughly how I do it.

My railroad is based on scenery in Northern California, so I google well-known landmarks around the Bay Area for photos. I make heavy use of the clone tool to blend and extend the different photos. Once I have a complete section, I process the images so that they look de-focused, more like they are painted rather than photographs. Once I print them out, they look sort of like watercolor drawings.

One of the reasons that I de-focus the photos is so that they don’t distract from the trains themselves. I want viewers to focus on the trains. I got this idea from an old Model Railroader cover of Jim Spencer’s Mad River Navigation Railway. His backdrops are painted and they really highlight the trains in front of them.

3.5 minutes