Flattening the O-Gauge Zen Garden

Frank Ellison, an influential model railroader of the postwar era, likened his layout to a theater. The trains were the actors, and the scenery was the stage sets they moved through.

Flats are one of the most common theater sets. As the name implies, a flat is simply a flat surface painted to suggest a larger (and deeper) structure.

Looking for a flat (or two)

I decided that flats would make ideal photo backdrops for my O-gauge Zen garden. And when it comes to flats for model railroads, there are many options. Some lines, such as Ameri-Towne, offer walls from their building kits for separate sale. It's also easy to simply purchase a building kit (like an old Plasticville model) and just use one or more walls.

Panoramic photo backdrops are also available. But I just wanted some structures. I chose a couple of flats from P.T.F. Designs. They're high-quality photographs of real structures mounted on foam core.

As you can see, they fit in quite well. And for the most part, it's not apparent that they are completely flat.

Adding some depth

When I placed the two flats on the layout, they didn't look quite right. I built out the larger structure, and that did the trick. 

The larger building now casts a shadow on the smaller. Once they were no longer on the same plane, the flats appeared more realistic.

And building out the second flat was quite simple. I scanned the flat into my computer. I then printed out a copy. I trimmed two strips from the copied image, each one inch wide

Both strips were mounted to 3/4"-wide pieces of foam core. One had a 1/4" paper overhang on the right, the other on the left. Those overhangs were glued to the sides of the original flat. I now had a quite shallow three-sided structure.

I'll be adding more flats to this layout, and varying the depth of each. This proved to be a quick and inexpensive way to add scenery.