Rail200 - trees and people

A day off on Friday and some time free over the weekend has enabled me to catch up where I'd wanted to be with the Rail200 project. The first job was to finish the trees. I'd got most of a pack of Woodland Scenic armatures left over from Loctern Quay, but the larger sizes were too tall for the height limit of the challenge and only the shorter trees could be used. My friend Tim mentioned he had a pack of smaller Woodland Scenics trees but had found them a little short. We did a swap so he got some of the taller trees and I got some of the smaller ones.

As usual, I cleaned up any moulding lines and marks, and drilled the bottom of the truck to superglue in a length of paperclip wire. They were then dunked in hot water and twisted to spread the branches, and tweaked into a 3-dimensional shape.

The trunks look a bit plasticky. In the past I've brush painted them, but this time I thought I'd airbrush them while the airbrush was out to weather the buildings. This seemed to work well.

And so, this week was foliage time. I'd picked up some Busch foliage at a show, but first impressions was it didn't tease out and fell apart if stretched too much, so the trees looked a bit lumpy. I couldn't find any left over foliage from previous trees (there must be some somewhere), so ordered some Woodland Scenics foliage which I know works well, and some WS polyfibre too. The foliage can be teased out until it is light and fluffy, then glued onto the branches (I use Matt Modge Podge). The polyfibre can be teased out even more, but needs foliage adding in the form of finely ground foam scatter stuck on a liberal coat of hairspray. 

The polyfibre tree (left) is fuller and more dense, but still lets light through. This will be a view-blocker for the front of the layout. The WS foliage (third, fifth, sixth trees) looks better than the Busch stuff, but together there is a variety of shades and density of foliage. 

The trees are planted in place on the layout by punching a hole through the (kitchen towel) surface, and poking the wire in covered in matt modge podge. The trees on lower ground needed a hole drilling in the ply surface below. The two tallest trees (second left and far right) are 135mm tall, so needed the trunks recessing into the polystyrene below the surface so they fit within the 140mm height limit!

The other job this weekend was to paint the details that had already been prepared and primed, and a few figures too. There are a couple of Monty's Models figures, the rest are Dapol/Airfix/Kitmaster - they still look good! Painting is using acrylics. The plastic figures were drilled up their legs for a 0.5mm wire to help locate them securely, the whitemetal figures already have a rod below a foot.

I've started gluing the details and people in place, and a few last jobs are in progress, so the finish line is in sight!

Rail200 - green fingers

The last couple of weeks have been manic at work with no time for modelling in the evenings, so I'm falling behind where I'd like to be with the deadline for the Rail200 challenge at the end of the month. However, I have managed to progress the scenic work over a couple of free Saturdays, and I've a day off later this week, so I'm confident I can catch up. 

You may have noticed in the last post that the water crane has found a home. There were a variety of opinions on this, but some good arguments that by the shed was logical and helped justify the extent of retaining wall. I was worried it would look too crowded, but realised I could trim the rear corner off its base to clear the wall so it could fit further left, It's surprising how much difference that made. 

Greenery started with traditional scatters over slightly diluted PVA. This provides a base layer for static grass, avoiding bare patches. For more rough ground, I add some ground foam type scatter too. 

The static grasses came next, using the Peco applicator and basing glue. I've used a mix of shorter, greener fibres and longer yellower ones, vacuuming up as soon as applied (with a jay cloth over the nozzle to collect and reuse fibres) then going back for a second and third application before the glue sets. I still find most of the grass lies down though! Shades and lengths of the grasses are varied depending on the type of ground. 

Finally, shrubs, bushes, and undergrowth are added using a variety of materials, Rubberised horsehair, lichen, and some carpet underlay I dyed green years ago in a failed attempt to make long grass but teased out makes a great foliage base. These get a liberal spray of hairspray and sprinkled with (or even dipped in) one of a selection of scatters - usually the fine ground foam type, sometimes a coarse foam or even just a plain fine scatter. Clumped foliage is also used, though I find that a bit dense and too crumbly. I use shades that are not muted and don't differ too much for a cohesive look. Matt Modge Podge is used to stick things in place, scissors to trim them, and tweezers to hold them during the messy gluing and place them.

For weeds in the grass, I brush a little slightly dilute matt modge podge over the top of the static grass and sprinkle on some of the ground foam, using a couple of similar shades for variety. 

I'd been thinking about a fence along the back, in the end it was a bit of a spontaneous decision. It's Dapol/Kitmaster fencing as I had some in and it looked right, painted shades of brown. Somehow it could fit a contour line with a little bending. The hill behind the engine shed was another matter, so I tried a foam hedge but that looked far to neat. I had some Busch foliage which I found didn't tease out well enough for trees. I cut a strip, folded it lengthways stuck with matt modge podge, then stuck it in place. I picked some chunks out with tweezers, and applied some different colour foam scatter over parts of it to make it look like a line of bushes rather than a foam sausage. There's a lot of undergrowth in the space between the hedge and the engine shed. 

The great thing about scenery on a model of this size is that progress is rapid and it makes a big difference to making it look more complete. Next, it needs some trees, which I'd made a start on but made no progress recently...

Rail200 - ballast, gravel, and water

Time for an update of progress over the last week, which has been focused on the ground cover around the tracks. I wanted a mixture of ballasted track and areas buried in gravel/ash, so for the latter areas I started with a layer of DAS clay. 

A simple jig allows the clay to be rolled out to a consistent depth. 

This was laid between the tracks on a coat of PVA, trimmed around buildings, and smaller pieces or offcuts used to fill the gaps between the sleepers, so bringing the ground up to sleeper height (or slightly below).

Ballasting was surprisingly tedious. I didn't want dilute glue finding its way down between the wooden base of the "modular" track and the surrounding foamboard as I'll need to remove that later. So, I applied neat PVA alongside that track and sprinkled the ballast on. 

Neat PVA was also applied around the moving parts of points and ballast applied, acting as a dam to keep the dilute PVA from getting where it shouldn't. After that ballasting took my usual route - applied dry, misted with water with about 20% IPA added from a spray bottle, then diluted PVA dripped on using a pipette. Then ages spent picking ballast from where it shouldn't be...

The ballast is a bag of granite chippings I've had for years and there must be the best part of a kilo left, so it will do a good few more small layouts. This time, the ballast had a slight greenish tinge when the glue dried, I've heard of others having this problem but I've never seen it - perhaps because this was cheap PVA rather than Resin W?

For the gravel/ash surface I applied fine sand (rescued some years ago when the kids grew out of the sandpit) over a layer of dilute PVA. The sand is applied through a tea strainer which helps give an even covering. The cocktail sticks (halved) hopefully protect the holes for the canopy supports.

I'm looking for a better solution as the sand needs painting! I applied a couple of coats of a dirty grey, changing the shade slightly for variation. 

When dry I applied a wash of dirty brown in a slightly patchy fashion, followed by an even more patchy application of smoke grey weathering powder over the still damp surface. 

The result is intentionally uneven and varied, although perhaps a little darker than I was aiming for as ash surfaces look surprisingly light from a distance. The shape of the sleepers just showing through the surface works quite well, the area providing easy access by foot although with the rails proud. I'd like the change from fine gravel/ash to ballast to be more blended, but I can't figure out how to do it. 

The ballast also had the dirty brown wash, which has removed most of the greenish tinge as well as toning it down. While the paints were out I painted the pond surface a muddy green colour, and blended it to a muddy brown colour near the edge, using acrylic paints applied very wet. This had previously had several coats of dark brown with a rub back in between to smooth the ply. Once dry, the water was added using Deluxe Materials Aqua Magic, a thin layer first, then a thicker (~2mm) later which was left to dry for a couple of days. I'd dammed the front with masking tape, the Aqua Magic is thick enough not to leak through it, but thin enough to self-level, and I did have to use a scalpel to remove the masking tape! The result is pretty much what I was aiming for - a still pond.