Hub City Central Model Railroad Club

Tips for Building Your Layout Pt. 7: Terra Firma to Floral Fauna

   Grass, Trees, Water and All Things Natural, Including Man’s Intrusions on Nature

Bringing the layout to “life” by modeling nature

I’d bet there is an attitude out there by now of “God! I thought Keith would never get to this point!” and, “When are we gonna put ballast under the track???” Both questions deserve this answer: All things in due time. Rushing things doesn’t help anyone or anything, and there is a reason to be methodical in your approach. It helps eliminate mistakes, which I’m trying to help everyone avoid as much as possible.

This portion of scenery is by far the easiest thing to do, consequently, it can get put off for a very long time, as I made mention of in Part Six.

And, like everything else, there is a procedure to follow in doing it. The first step is to add your ground foam.

This is going to be presented as though you should be doing everything is a set sequence. However, there are certain aspects that can be put on hold for a time, others that will take a loooongg time to accomplish because of the nature of the project. The only items that need to be done A.S.A.P are ground foam, coarse turf, river and creek beds, “beach”, and getting your water poured. The rest can be accomplished as you see fit.

Mention of the scenery products and manufacturers

Mention should be made here about the manufacturers that market scenic materials for your layout. Actually, I have no particular choice in any of the various products made by the various manufacturers. I’ve used Woodland Scenics products almost exclusively, mostly because they are reasonably priced and easily had. Foreign firms BLMA, Prieser, Merten, Kibri, Vollmer and Faller all offer scenery materials

ranging from grass mats to ground foam to flowers and cash crop details (like corn stalks) and any and all are quite good. U.S. Firms Walthers, Walthers/Life Like, Model Power, and a few others that have slipped my mind, also offer products that range from bad to very good. The Walthers/Life Like scenery products are residuals of the old Varney-Varney/Life Like line, some of which are very crude. Usable, yes, but there is no escaping the fact that these are made for the nymphite, first-time modeler and/or those modeling on a tight budget. These products are almost impossible to secure to the layout no matter what cement you use, and they look crude, toy-like and out-of-scale (For years, those of us with any time in this hobby have referred to Life Like ballast as “Dyed Kitty Litter”, which it is). These products are the items you stay away from.

If I had my “druthers”, I’d like to use the scenic materials once offered by “John’s Lab”, which, I believe, has been out-of-business for a number of years now. John’s Lab had some very nice scenic material at one time. John’s Lab was at one time what Woodland Scenics is to us today. Dave Conrad, the manager of Pope’s Hobbyland in Wausau, has his own line of scenery material out there that are OK. I’ve been using Woodland Scenics materials for over 25 years now, and they are adequate, but nothing to jump up and down about. There are one or two complaints to be voiced about Woodland Scenics ballast to be brought up in the section on Ballasting. Where Woodland Scenics made a great step forward was by offering LARGE BAGS of scenic material, such as Ground Foam. Other manufacturers have followed Woodland Scenics’ lead in this area. Believe me; you’ll appreciate having the large bag of grass or whatever instead of several small bags when you get busy applying Turf material.

 Woodland Scenics also has introduced “Shaker” bottles, complete with a shaker lid, and these work very well for ballasting, but with the varying coarsenesses of Turf, they don’t work at all. Everything bunches up at the lid and you end up spending as much time shaking the bottle with the cap closed trying to clear the lid as you do actually sprinkling the turf on the layout. I still prefer to hand-sprinkle turf with my fingers.

Starting Ground foam application

Here we go, folks. First off, you’ll need the one gallon bottle of White Elmer’s Glue or Elmer’s Carpenter’s Wood Glue. You’ll need a bristle brush, for helping spread the glue on your plastered scenery, two plastic spray bottles, one for a glue-water-soap mixture and the other for a clear water-rubbing alcohol mixture and your index finger. Also handy is to keep a bucket of clear water handy for cleaning your brush and/or your fingers.

For your basic application of ground foam, I recommend the large bag or large shaker bottle of Woodland Scenics’ FINE Turf. Color of that turf is up to you, but here is a partial list of what I use:

-The Large bag of Woodland Scenics Fine turf, Green Blend

-Small bag of WS “Earth”

-Small bag of WS “Soil” (for mud puddles, farm yards, farm manure piles and freshly-plowed fields)

-Small bag of WS “Weeds”

-Small bag of WS “Yellow Grass” (for Dandelions, Mustard and other floral types)

I add the other colors to the Green Blend turf as I go along.

Before you start, mask off the following items:

-Paved roads.

-Paved Parking Lots or other concrete/asphalt surfaces.

-River and Creek bottoms

-Lake “Beach Front”

-Any rock outcropping features you don’t want covered in “grass”

-Structure bases

-The track from edge of the cork roadbed to the opposite edge of the cork roadbed.

Begin by spreading your glue from the one-gallon bottle on your plastered scenery, working from high to low, left to right. You really can not work on an area more than two feet square. Spread the glue downward with your brush, working glue in to smaller spaces with your finger as needed. Make certain the glue does not have a chance to collect in lower areas to form a “puddle!” Clean your hand (s), and dry them thoroughly; leave your brush soak in your pail of clean water; begin spreading the turf using a swinging motion with your hand from high to low. This goes quickly, believe-it-or-not. You will have to go back over spots where the turf sinks into the glue. At points like these I may use more of the Green Blend turf, or one of the Earth or Soil colors. When you are satisfied that your turf is even enough, proceed to the next area and repeat the process, working from high to low, left to right. As mentioned, this goes very quickly, even with having to watch for puddling, and you can put the basic ground foam over a ten-foot area in about one hour. I don’t recommend doing more than that if you have as many high spots as low spots, because you’ll give yourself Carpal Tunnel Syndrome pulling the triggers of your sprayers (which, by the time you get all the scenery down you’ll be on the verge of---or be suffering from---anyway). Allow this application to thoroughly dry for 24 hours.

Next step: Spray application of your cement.

There is a formula for mixing the glue-water-soap combination, but I’ve ignored it for so many years I can not remember what it WAS. With the Alcohol and water, its 10-to-1, ten parts water to one part rubbing alcohol.

To be honest, everything underneath the turf you’ve put on is “dry” into the glue you spread on the scenery forms. Everything on top is still loose. Using your water-alcohol mixture, SOAK the turf you put down the day before---and I mean SOAK it! Once you have water literally standing, then grab your spray bottle with your glue-soap-water mixture and go back over everything you just sprayed with water-alcohol.

Why the water-alcohol mixture? Alcohol acts as a drawing agent and will help “pull” the glue throughout the turf (or ballast as the case may be) so that all of the turf will be cemented, not a patch here and there.

And, yes, SOAK everything. You’ll know you have enough glue when everything takes on a white tinge.

Just as a warning: You will most likely need to add turf to thin areas that will show up after the spraying procedure. Once you do that, you can spray the glue-water-soap combination over the “patched” area.

What you just did will take a few days to completely dry. With the first section complete for this stage, you can go farther on and repeat everything described above until you have this stage completed.

Next: Coarse Turf

I use four color types of Woodland Scenics’ Coarse Turf. They are:

-Medium Green

-Dark Green

-Burnt Grass

-Earth

The Coarse Turf goes along the railroad and Township Gravel Road rights-of-way, and along any ditches. This becomes the smaller plants that grow up along such areas. Application is best done by “dropping” it by hand where you want it. Mix your colors! Everything is NOT perfectly green in real life! Cementing it on is the same procedure as the fine turf described above.

Gravel roads, river and creek beds

Now, you can do the scenery in your river and creek beds, shoreline along something (where applicable, be it a creek, river, pond, lake, whatever, but remember, “shoreline”, such as it may be, doesn’t always exist), Gravel Roads, driveways and parking areas. I use Woodland Scenics’ Fine Brown Ballast for gravel. In my opinion, its as close as you can get to the color of the granite used for gravel roads in this region of

Wisconsin; other regions of this state and elsewhere across the United states, depending on where you’re modeling, often use something other material for Township Roads, such as finely crushed limestone, steel mill slag or whatever material is cheap and easily had locally (“Cheap” and “Easily Had” tend to remind me of a girlfriend or two that I’ve known). Putting the road surface down is the same as Turf. Spread your glue, sprinkle your brown ballast, soak with water-alcohol and then with water-glue-soap.

For river and creek beds where the depth is less than 5 feet, I use regular sand---you know the kind, that your children and grandchildren play in and the neighborhood cats like to poop on. Since I’m modeling a specific section of Wisconsin, study of the creeks in question revealed sand bottoms, and in the case of Rock Creek near Greenwood, lots of rocks! You can, literally, walk across Rock Creek at normal water levels on the rocks contained therein. Application is the same as Turf, spread your glue, “trinkle” your sand over this, allow it to dry, and then soak it with the water-alcohol and then glue-soap-water. A word of warning: Sand and Elmer’s Glue seem to be made for each other and the sand will become rock hard---very MUCH like Concrete!!! I tell you this because if it comes to where you need to make an alteration, you will need, literally, an air hammer to get this back off once it has dried and cured. Imagine, then, what happens once you apply your “water” over this!

Tall grasses

Woodland Scenics markets “Field Grass” which is, really, nothing more than brush bristles dyed or left the “natural” color (a white-ish look) that can be used for the tall grass often found along ditches. I have used this on the Hub City Central, and it looks nice, but I have yet to find a way to put up large areas of it, only clumps here and there. Addition of Tall Grasses is a project that needn’t be done right away, but something that can be strung along over a long period because you’ll get very tired of picking out strands, trimming them with a scissors, and gluing them to the layout with white glue.

Also, Cat Tails are a feature often seen along ditches, particularily at low points and near culverts. Ron Currie “made” cat tails from electrical wire by partly stripping it and then “carving” the leaves, making a credible cat tail. This, too, is “picky” work, better left to a day when you have little else to do because the application of such will eventually drive you insane, and I’m not kidding. These things do go a long way to dress up your scenery, however, and are worth the time it takes to add them.

Sumac

Once again, Woodland Scenics markets what they call “Foliage”, which is a loosely-knit sheet of some sort of mesh with fine ground foam in/on it. I have used this to model Sumac, a regular plant found along the railroad, because I can’t find any other use for it besides trying to cover a large area with planting or for use in Tree kits. Other modelers have used this for Ivy or other clinging/climbing foliage. Sumac itself stands about 4 to 5 feet tall on spindly limbs---I’ve never seen a Sumac branch larger than 1-inch in circumference---and it is very hard to model this. I’ve used toothpicks, painted brown and bent at odd angles, with the Foliage material glued to the ends. It works, but you won’t see it on the Hub City Central because it is a very fragile thing, best suited to a home layout. I prefer to use the Light Green color for Sumac as it looks through most of the summer months. Other colors of Foliage are available including “Fall Colors”, a gold and an orange.

Now then, Trees

I’ll bet you thought I was forgetting this, eh? Trees are available from just about everyone that manufactures scenery, from the crude to the magnificent, from Kits to ready-made, any size and shape, what-have-you. My personal preference is the ready-to-add trees made by Woodland Scenics. The drawback is that these are expen$ive little items to add, but they are far better than building your own out of a tree kit, or buying the “cheapie” trees that look like just what they are---cheap. My take on this was not to foliate my entire railroad all at once, but to add these in when I can “afford” it. One drawback of modeling the Greenwood Line was that the right-of-way was festooned with trees along the right-of-way fencing, plus the railroad ran through spot stands of trees (not really a “woods” per se, but a small clump of trees, often hardwood, left by a farmer or lumber company that never cut them because most lumbering concerns only wanted the softwood, a.k.a., Pine), and, living here in Wisconsin, practically every tree type you can think of is there to get your attention, from Birch to Maple, Elm to Oak, and Firs of every description—Jack pine, Ponderosa Pine, etc. Modeling this region of Wisconsin you find many mixtures of tree types, no real set pattern, beyond being able to tell that the early lumbermen were after the softwood types by the lack of, and relatively young nature of, the Pine Trees around this area. Also included are numerous deadfall trees that died, decayed, rotted and fell over. There are also dead trees that the wind and time haven’t taken over, standing there, leaf-less, and gray. Stumps are always there. All this detail is available from the various manufacturers of scenery and easily added as you go along. It needn’t be done all at once as I’ve mentioned.

The only piece of advice I can add is: I notice that model trees come with brown trunks. Real trees have noticeably gray trunks (all I have to do is look out the windows here at home to see 6 very poignant examples of trunk color), with a tinge of green on the north side. I prefer to take these ready-made trees and paint the trunks either Grimey Black or Weathered Black (which are actually various versions of a gray theme---I’ve even been known to use New York Central Gray for tree trunk color) with a very-thinned pass of a Green (Moss varies in color, from dark green to yellow depending on the time of year) over one side of the tree trunk for moss, before installation on the layout. It really does bring something out in the model tree.

Time to make water

With the basic ground foam, turf and textures in place, you can now pour your water. If you haven’t cemented in your bridge piers or your wooden trestles, you can do so now. Although there are several products available from the various manufacturers for water, I recommend Envirotex Clear Epoxy Resin. Woodland Scenics has “Water in a Bottle”, some sort of clear latex that pours right onto the layout and “Pourable Water”, a bag of clear plastic beads you melt on your stove and then pour. From all my experience with this, Envirotex’s product is by far the best, although is tends to be a bit pricey. Envirotex’s product is a two-part mixture which is very easy to use. Follow the directions is all I really need to say about it. It can be tinted, and waves and rippling effects can be added quite easily. Just follow the directions!! There isn’t any other advice I can add to this.

Time to paint your paved “Intrusions on nature”

At this point you can “finish” your paved roads, driveways and parking areas. A long time ago I got sick of trying to acquire enough Floquil or Polly S paints of Weathered Black and Concrete colors and made myself two paint chips using the Weathered Black and Concrete colors, then ran out to Fleet Farm and matched them up with Latex Flat colors in the paint sample rack. That is all I have used on the Hub City Central since the reconstruction of track, modules and scenery, and I recommend such for a home layout. Latex will fill in the pores of the Basswood or Balsa road surfaces you’ve put down and give the roads a very nice look. However, I need to mention here that when you paint your roads, brush in only ONE direction! At best, brush lengthwise with the road surface. It avoids giving a “washboard” effect.

Bushes and such

One last thing to add is the overgrowth along the railroad and roads, “bushes” as such. For this I use Woodland Scenics “Underbrush” and “Bushes”, which are, in reality, large and finer ground, ground foam, useful for creating bushes, brush, etc., as you need. This all comes in a variety of color and “blends” to suit ones needs. Again, mixing colors when you add this to the layout doesn’t hurt. It goes

on with a spot of glue and you tearing the amount you want for the size of the bush you think you’ll need. This goes very fast and you’ll most likely have bushes all over your layout before the trees. You can, conceivably, cover your entire layout in one weekend.

In Closing

At this stage your layout—no matter what size---will be taking on its personality and begin to resemble the real world. Other additions—like flowering weeds, field grasses and the like, can be added as you find the time and see fit to do so. I made brief mention of “Fence Lines”, and Fences along farm field and railroad rights-of-way are common……..I just have never figured out how to do so. Since right-of-way fences stretch along the railroad on both sides, there is a lot of fencing work to do----if you so choose to be that detailed. The Late John Ruple had fashioned a “barbed wire” fence on one of his modules in the Club Layout out of wire nails and copper wire. It looked nice, and didn’t seem to be the hardest thing to do.

Next month, we’ll start ballasting.

“73”

Keith