Dean’s been back in touch with a nice tip on model train trees evergreen:

“Al, as many of my followers know, I like to model the mountain areas of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

This area has many evergreen trees, pines, junipers, and piñons. Although, large clump foliage does an adequate job for representing junipers, piñons, and small bushes, so far, I haven’t come up with a good, inexpensive model for pines as can be seen from this photo of my current layout.

But recently I found this in my model store:

Although the trees looked pretty good, most were too big and too green. Here’s how I fixed them.

First, I cut the larger ones into two or three parts. With the shorter cutoffs, I glued small pieces to the tops if needed. Example: tree on the right

Then I sprayed the trees with diluted white glue (scenic cement, one part white glue, three parts water, a few drops of dish soap)

and sprinkled them with my usual fine turf (light green, yellow grass, and earth). I used the brown bases that came with the trees glued to a board to hold multiple trees.

Then I drilled holes in the plaster mountain and glued the trees in place. As you can see these look pretty good at a distance. I got 17 trees out of this bag, so they each cost about $0.50.

Check out my video for more details and with a running train.

Dean from New Mexico”

A big thanks to Dean for sharing his model train trees evergreen tip – there’s quite a few posts on trees now, here’s a few of them:

HO model train trees.

Make model train trees.

Model train large trees.

Making trees model railroad.

Model train trees.

Model railroad trees.

How to make trees for a model train layout.

Now on to Dale:

“Hello Al,

My name is Dale, and though I cant make a video, I took pic. I know this will make a lot of train hobbyists happy, probably make someone upset, but oh well why keep jacking up the price on stuff for such a little amounts of foliage.

12 years ago, I was upset about how much the pliable foliage cost, and decided to figure out how to make it myself.

The dear moss is whats used, anywhere in the south can be found, at least thats where I get it. I live in Florida. And this stuff is every where in the woods.

Then after trial and error for 2 years this is how to make your own foliage, as much as you want.

Goto a store and by finger nail polish remover, its really like a concentrate, this stuff does not like to stick to anything, by itself, but I put it into a jar of pickle juice, mixed it, added green cloths dye, and shoved in dear moss, waited, till it soaked up the solution, then removed the dear moss once saturated. I then squeezed out with my hands back into the jar any excess liquid.

Now the fingernail remover or skin protectant called glycerin, I found at walmart under the fingernail aisle.

I have many jars of pickle I used, used varying methods of color and different liquids ie, water, leather solutions, etc. to mix with the glycerin, I added more glycerin to one jar then another, all with the same results.

I think the plain ole pickle juice mixed with 3 or 4 bottles of glycerin works quite well.

In my old tackle box is all the different foliage I made 1996 still as pliable, soft as today, as you can see I took the pictures today.

Dear moss once it dries out is brittle as heck. Sure one can spray paint the foliage the color one wants, but that wasn’t for me.

So I made my own pine trees, using a coffee grinder to chop up pine bark then rolled a stock of dog funnel, I guess, thats what its called with elmers glue all over it, let dry, then added more glue lower down the stock, until after a few times of this I got the shape I wanted.

Then I added limbs and the foliage to the limbs. I found that an envelope cut away at one end did real well so I could roll the stock, when done so easy to put the excess of the pine bark back into a container I have for it. I have to use my cell phone to send this so hopefully this will post ok.

First pic tackle box, of different shades of foliage I made, red an green 2nd pic of pickle jar..

3rd pic of glycerin.
4th pic of color dye
5th pic of pine trees I made.

Im trying to figure out how to make palm trees now, the stocks off pine trees look like the trunks of palm trees, but its finding the right foliage for the tops, I haven’t figured out yet.

For now I can have all the pine trees I want, all the oaks too, I haven’t started on the firs yet, I like realistic looking trees, I have all the shrubs I need also. And they dont dry out.

Just dont soak the foliage you made in plain water, or they will, and they wont loose the colors, maybe fade over the years, but, what I made is as good as any expensive store bought foliage.

The glycerin is the key here.

Im still working on my layout HO 24×10 layout, in my garage.

Al you may need to post captions for me to pic, I thank everyone who post here and send in ideas and help, hope my post helps you or someone here.

Thank you sincerely Al your site is the greatest around.

Dale”

That’s all for today folks. Thanks to Dean for his model train trees evergreen tip, and to Dale too.

Please do keep ’em coming.

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

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

PPS More N scale layouts here if that’s your thing.

And there’s the Silly Discount bundle too.