Dean’s been in touch with a very good ‘how to’ on model train mountain scenery:
“Al, greetings from Dean in New Mexico.
After a long winter of time off, I am finally getting back to construction of the Conejos Valley Railroad.
With the table and supports built and the track laid down and tested, I am now moving on to scenery.
This is a tutorial on one of my two construction methods, building up hills and mountains around layers of Styrofoam.
I know that lots of modelers use the more expensive blue construction foam, but when cut with a hot knife, the Styrofoam gives nice smooth surfaces.
Today, I want to show how I built and put down scenery for a small hill in the left front corner of the layout.
Before proceeding I added fascia boards to the four sides. This gave a line for the top of the hill.
Then I started cutting, with a hot knife, four layers of the Styrofoam to build up the hill.
I then glued the cut layers together with Liquid Nails.
After the glue dried, I sanded off the rough surfaces to make a smooth hill.
Then I coated the base form with plaster cloth. Incidentally, the cloth sold for body casting (sold by Amazon and others) is much cheaper than, and works just as good as, that sold for model railroads.
I painted the dried cloth with a mixture of acrylic paint. I used Apple Barrel brand paints from Amazon (cheap) and varied the recipe until I got the effect I wanted; a slightly reddish-brown color like that found in my neighborhood. (16 oz Nutmeg Brown, 2 oz Yellow, 2 oz Khaki, diluted with 2 oz water.)
Here is my recipe for scenic cement. Many modelers use ModPodge instead of the white glue, but I bought a gallon of white glue several years ago, and still have half of it left.
The scenic cement is painted on
Then I covered the wet cement with Woodland Scenics scenic turf: lots of Earth, less of Yellow Grass and Burnt Grass, only a little Light Green, only a little black Soil, and very small bits of darker Green.
Finally, I use white glue to attach clump foliage (Light Green, Medium Green. And Dark Green, small amounts).
Since I am a sloppy worker, I always get spots of plaster on the track and roadbed. I treat it with water, and it is sucked up into the rubber roadbed. At that point I ballast the track. (Subject of a later discussion.)
And here is a photo of the final results
A big thanks to Dean for sharing his way of making model train mountain scenery – it’s a really clear ‘how to’.
That’s all for today folks.
Please do keep ’em coming – I know I keep saying it, but it’ still jolly quiet.
And if today is the day you stop dreaming and start doing, the Beginner’s Guide is here.
Best
Al
PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.
