Photos, Printing and Drones, Oh My!

So Port Dinllaen needs a backscene. I have read through "Creating a BackScene" by  Bambrisk and Ellis-Cockell and other than feeling totally inadequate in terms of depth (of skill and of baseboard!) I have decided that the approach taken by Llanberis looks best.  I do have some skill in PhotoShop, so I can see a way of manipulating reality but I have to start with a photo. 
The first question is though, what goes where?  Which bits of reality?  The model is, as I like to say "topologically accurate" - like a Tube map the joins are right but what happens in between is distorted. In particular the single line to Pwhelli runs backwards (N→S) past Pont Llyfni, then it is on the mountainside over the coast past Yr Eifl and Trefor junction (which is the wrong order) and then it vanishes behind Nantlle which is over 30 miles away.  So, we need to decide on what locations to use.

As I was sorting out my father's estate I took a flying visit to the Llyn to "scout" locations.  This is what I determined.

The most scenically interesting area we must cover is the place where the mountains of Yr Eifl march down to the sea between Trefor and Pistyll. These can cover the roughly 20 ft on the RHS.  By including 3D cliffs that project out from the backscene we can provide view breaks at two points to frame Tan-Y-Graig station roughly where Nant Gwythern is on the map - although not a match in real terms it will be interesting. Next to that at the bottom we can position Nantlle using its actual village behind the station and in front of the slate "mountains". That will lead onto a vision of slate working in front of the view up the Nantlle valley towards Snowdon at lower left. Finally on the LHS we morph from that into the view roughly from the RNLI lifeboat house at Port Dinllaen towards the distant hills. 

I have not decided what to do about the view through the legs of the viaduct behind Pont Llynfi Junction - which should by rights be of the beach leading down to the sea as the viewer would have N or their right. Something will need to be done to remove the view clean through to Port Dinllaen and the storage sidings beneath.

Here's a rough schematic - 



Next time we'll talk about how to generate the raw material images that are needed.