John’s been back in touch, this time showing us how he makes his forest foliage:

“Hi Al,

It has been some time since I wrote. I have been moving and expanding my layout, and I finally got some proper scenery time in recently and thought I would share what I am doing.

I have a U-shaped section of the new layout which is situated directly above my new workbench. Because of its location, I want to get it completed early so that I can freely work on projects on the workbench without fear of breaking something when working above.

The U-Section has a nice broad 36” radius curve on one side, and I have been scenicing this area. In front of the tracks is an overgrown Pasture, but behind it is forest. Below is how I went about making the leaf litter material for the forest floor from the leaves right outside my home.

First, I collected leaves from near the house and removed the thicker bits of stem and larger veins. I was rough about it, if a little got in that is fine. Forest floors have sticks, too and these thicker bits make good sticks.

Once I had a blender cup full, I added some water – maybe a cup or so – and ran it on a low setting for about 5 minutes. If you want a finer texture, you could go longer, but 5 minutes is a good place to start for HO scale. Next I strained most of the liquid out using a fairly fine strainer.

Then I spread the solid material on a piece of aluminum foil, and baked it in the oven at 175F for several hours until dry.

The dried material is then easily broken apart in one’s fingers, and is ready to be sprinkled onto the next wooded section coming to your layout, before trees are planted. I fixed it in place with Isopropyl Alcohol and very (4 or 5 to 1) diluted Mod Podge.

After the glue set, I went over the entire area with my airbrush, spraying an extremely diluted Tamiya XF-57 Buff. This is simply for highlights and it tones down the color to match what the material looks like in the natural world.

A big thanks to John – you can see more of his 10×14 HO scale layout here.

And he shows us how to add grass to a layout here.

A big thanks to John for his ‘how to’ on his forest foliage. I think it looks spot on – just like his grass ‘how to’.

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you get stop dreaming and start doing, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.