Thicket Progress

Armatures for the thicket are complete for now. There were fewer discards than I anticipated, and so, I may need to demote some of the first row trees to the second row as I start planting if the thicket comes out too diaphanous. Once the armatures were formed and twisted into tree shapes, I coated […]

More Thicket Armatures

We’ve had a parade of visitors this summer, and as a result, the armatures for the thicket trees are nearing completion. After creating a number of trees with 26-gauge wire and strands of electrical chord, I went back to Michaels and found they also carry 32-gauge floral wire. This turned out to be just the […]

Sliding into Staging

In response to the thicket trial run, @bawdsey of Albion Yard asked about the window and how it relates to the layout: Does the window and it’s exterior background factor into the ‘picture’?The reason I ask, I had a similar experience though my window was frosted. To get round the backlighting and distraction of the […]

Thicket Armatures

We had house guests staying in the train room for the past week, and anyway it’s summer and the weather is too nice to spend days in the basement. It turns out that bending tree armatures is an excellent patio activity that requires minimal tools or precision, and is thus compatible with the consumption of […]

Thicket Trial Run

Using a paper template, I jig-sawed a plywood base for the thicket. The plywood is 6mm thick, and so, I cut the cork away to bring the new landform closer in height to the edge of the pasture. With a little luck, I won’t have to fill the gap between the two sections as it […]

Thicket Shapes Begin

Very few model railway activities lend themselves to sunny days on the deck. I reckon tree-making might, and so, I’ve started laying out the shapes of the first row of trees in the thicket. I started tracing the trees in InkScape, but that turned out to be very slow. So I switched to an iPad […]

An Unusual View

While working on a derailment at the Lee Manufacturing spur, I grabbed this photo to see what was going on with the alignment. There is no way to get your eyeballs in to see this view, but I must say, I really like the way this scene is coming together over the past two or […]

Slinging Grass at the Fields

In a final dash to improve the layout before this weekend’s VanRail open house, I warmed up the static grass machine and let it loose on the fields in the foreground of the engine facility. In the messy flurry of ground foam, flock and glue, I learned several new tricks and techniques. On second day, […]

Filling Gaps

With my VanRail open house almost upon me, I’m racing to get a little more scenery presentable. Now, what to do about the gaps in the scenery caused by my preference for modular construction? The big gaps were easy to fill with some ground goop, but there are some smaller cracks that also need filling, […]

Wheat Field Experiments

At the end of summer, a wheat field should be a beautiful golden straw colour, and the seed heads should be well-formed and heavy. My research indicates that the varieties available in 1905 were taller than those we have today, which themselves are waist-height. Initially I thought I could make use of a Silflor grass […]