One of the greatest joys of model railroading is creating a scenic display that represents natures own creative art work somewhere in the World.
The variables that one encounters are endless in ones imagination of what he or she wants a layout to look like around the track work which includes bridges, buildings, mills, coal mines, etc. You may duplicate some scene from nature or you may decide to create a scenic landscape that is all your own.
What are the various products available to build a scenic landscape for your railroad? There are several means in which you can build such a scene.
The easiest way to build a scenic railroad is to build an open frame layout which gives you height and contour so you have a pre-made elevations to work with. Your choice of size or area to develop a layout is based on the area that you have to work with. You may even build your layout on a sheet of plywood or the like. I wouldn’t recommend it because you will get frustrated after a while and want to have something a bit more realistic for your layout.
Before beginning the scenic part of the layout you must plan out your trackage. The main routes, yards, single and duel trackage, by passes, along with station points and possibly a roundhouse. It is best to build all the trackage first with your elevations, tunnel portal locations, bridge locations and determine you ruling grade.
Once this is accomplished you may begin to build mountains, hills, streams, canyons, gorges where bridges would go, rivers and other unique characteristics that will provide scenic beauty through the layout.
The tools you need are putty knives, water, Hot Gun for gluing, scissors, plastic bucket or large plastic bowel, wood stirring device like used for paint, possibly an electric stapler, masking tape and paper towels.
The types of products available are numerous. Much of it is general household material that you would normally through away. For example, cardboard strips of an inch+ wide can be cut from boxes to what ever length you need. If the card board isn’t quiet long enough splice another strip together with a hot glue gun. The card board is the means to build a general frame of mountain or mountain ranges, small hills, track siding, etc.
You may want to use chicken wire and bend it to your liking and staple the edges to the appropriate mounting points to create what you want. You will still need some type of supporting material to hold the chicken wire in place such as heavy card board or prices of wood. I don’t recommend it for it is expensive, heavy and unruly to handle.
The other form of contour making is to use Styrofoam. It can be cut/shaved to the height and depth you want. Once formed it can be covered with different kinds of media to create a mountain contour.
Basically you have to have some kind of format that creates a skeleton for other materials to be added to form a realistic mountain, etc.
The material used to cover your skeleton frame work is varied. Cut up brown or white paper sacks glued to the frame work, cut up butcher paper glued to the frame work, plaster molding made of a latex that has impressions of rocks filled with wet plaster then laid onto the frame work and let dry then remove the latex mold, paper towels soaked in hydracal or plaster and then laid on the frame wet, Woodland Scenics plaster cloth that is cut to size from a ten inch role and dipped in water and laid on the frame work until the whole mountain is covered. Portland cement contoured onto the surface of the projected mountain with a paper or cloth medium that will allow the adherence of the cement. Also, the aforementioned material may be covered over the Styrofoam and let dry.
Once this process is accomplished you need to seal and contour your mountains or what ever scene you are creating. You may hand plaster the mountain with different size putty knives, increase the amount of hydracal the same as the plaster. With Hydracal you must work fast or make up small batches as it will get hard very fast. Coating of chicken wire will take some kind of semi-porous medium that will soak up plaster, hydracal, or Portland cement with out allowing the material to drip through the chicken wire. With any of these methods you may use vermiculite as a rock looking cover while the choice of media is still wet.
My choice of materials that best suit my needs and seems the quickest and cheapest way to create what ever scene you want is as follows. I use material that I mentioned before. The cardboard strips and the Woodland Scenics plaster cloth. Included with these products is a product called Sculptamold which comes in a semi-powder form with very fine shredded paper like paper Mache. You add water to it until it has a semi-loose consistence. Using a putty knife you mold the Sculptamold onto the dry plaster cloth. Because of the fibers in the Sculptamold the contouring is random. The results when dry are shapes and contours that look like almost all rock formations found. You can work with the Sculptamold while wet to create a ridge, canyon walls, over hangs, etc. Do not over do it when making up the Sculptamold for it will harden on you within approximately a half an hour. The temperature of the room has an affect on the water evaporation rate. Just work in away the will cover the surface in a timely manner. Don’t get into a hurry.
In the Part II article we will discuss the painting of the mountains and other formations, addition of various grasses, plants, shrubs and trees along with artificial water. How to build culverts for the water to flow; addition of real rocks and other materials including bridges, tunnels and walls.
Joy Ball has been involved in the restoration and maintenance of a variety of Brass Model Locomotives. Through her years of expertise, Mrs. Ball has perfected the art of train restoration often spending countless hours preserving vintage Brass Locomotive to the running condition of even the newest Brass Model Replicas. It should be noted that the above article was written by Joy’s husband Michael Ball. Receive her free newsletter at http://www.brasslocomotiveworks.com
