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...