February 8, 2011

I am slowly adding trees to the center section of my layout. The plan is to have the train be barely visible through the trees as it travels through this section of the layout. This photo shows two tree stumps. These came from our grape vines in the backyard. We cut them down when winter hits. Most of the vines are curved, so it is a bit of challenge to find some straight sections, but the thicker ones were straight. I cut them with garden cutters to just under an inch. I used a good quantity of yellow carpenter's glue to glue them to the layout's scenery base. I then added some more glue to represent the roots near the base. These were later painted a flat black. I plan to go back and dry-brush the "roots" with white paint to make them more realistic. The idea behind these tree stumps is that the trees became too big and were a danger to the railroad, so they were cut down.

These are my first two trees specifically made for S-scale. I have made a lot of N-scale trees in the past, but once you move to a larger scale, the trees need to be quite a bit bigger. Since these are my first experiments, there is much room for improvement. Both were made from 12-inch long (64 scale feet), 3/8" (24 scale inch diameter) dowels that were hewn with a rough rasp to give them the bark texture. I then stained them with Minwax "Red Oak" and quickly wiped the stain off. I then brushed the famous India Ink and alcohol mixture over the bark. After that dried, I dry-brushed white over the bark to make it pop out. The tree in the foreground was then made from dried caspia branches (bought at Hobby Lobby), while the one in the back had its branches made from "Sweet Huck" (also from Hobby Lobby, in the dried flowers section). The one in the back was then covered with poly fiber, and both were sprayed with spray adhesive and had several different colors of Woodland Scenics fine ground foam applied. The one the back has been voted off the layout! The one in the front has been improved a bit more and now has a temporary spot in the Shingiss area of the layout. I drilled a hole in the bottom of the tree and inserted a piece of stiff metal wire. This makes it possible to insert the tree into the scenery base. Since this is a large tree it will be in the foreground, and so for now I need to be able to remove it. You'll see glimpses of it in photos below.

February 23, 2011

I made a handful of conifer trees using the method described by Model Railroad Hobbyist's editor and publisher Joe Fugate in the January 2011 supplemental video. I had never tried this method, and it seemed reasonably successful. More practice will improve these trees. For now, they are planted in the background, with hopefully some better-looking trees going in front of them in the near future. By the way, in the back, in between the two sets of trees in the photo below, near where the buildings are painted on the backdrop, I planted three N-scale figures. These may help in the forced perspective. They can't be seen in the photos, but they may be discovered by people visiting the layout in person.

The smallest conifer trees I had made, I planted in the back corner, for forced-perspective.

Various trees have been planted against the backdrop in the middle. Many more to come.

Several conifer trees were built and installed. I also added some undergrowth and small bushes. If you compare it with the photo above, you can see quite a difference.

November 15, 2011

Now that the telephone poles have wires, I built a handful of new, larger trees and installed them. A dead tree has fallen across the creek. To see how I made these trees, see my Generic Foreground Trees article.