Black Butte Junction, circa 1954

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Very nice. Was this photo edited to place the background, is it a module that was placed outside, or is the backdrop a photo?

Yeah, that backdrop or whatever is awesome. I need something like that for my Oregon Division.... tell us more!

Thanks, Jeff! Let's see, what can I tell you?

Since I worked 35 years for an airline and moved around a lot, the Siskiyou Southern is a fairly mobile, freelance modular railroad that models country I fell in love with as a young boy - the Oregon and California Siskiyou-Shasta area. In retirement, we moved to the Medford area (and built a house very near the Siskiyou Line) to be right in the middle of it.

To facilitate frequent moves (in the past - no more!), I developed a "rib-and-spine" technique for making a layout - and especially its roadbed - out of cardboard. There's very little wood in the layout, so it's fairly light weight. Also, rib-and-spine allowed good-looking, reliable roadbed with nice super-elevation. Check my photos - there are a couple that show rib-and-spine back about 1980. Scenery is simple cardboard strips and hardshell. Although I made a lot of Ponderosa pines with furnace filter, scenery is simple and was planned to allow lots of vacuuming and easy maintenance.

A couple years ago, I "finished" the layout and started getting into digital photography and photo editing. N-Scale Magazine published several covers and articles in 2007-08. The Black Butte shots show a 'connector' section of the layout that joins 2 sections. Because it's about 6 feet long and only 9 inches wide, photos tend to show a lot of the room - windows and outside, furniture, other parts of the layout. For that reason, I edited this photo to replace the background with a shot I took down in the actual Black Butte area. Many of my shots include background mural, but I needed more for this shot, so used a 'prototype' photo.

I'd be happy to tell you more if you'd tell my what your particular interest(s) is/are. Or questions?

Thanks for your interest!
Scott