I have the attention span of a five-year-old, so at this point I started on several projects at the same time, scenery, scratch building the station, goods shed and platform, and ballasting the track, and the electrics for points and control panel. If I got bogged down in one of them, I just moved on to the next. This is a certain technique for not getting very much done at all. Luckily I have a good friend who lives in Copenhagen, every time he visits I get a fresh dose of enthusiasm, and the pace picks up for a bit.

This post will focus on scenery. The station is built on a flat baseboard, in reality Hatch station is set in a cutting with steep banks on each side. But to make it a bit easier to see the station the cutting on my layout widens on the left hand side to create a natural viewing window. I cut formers from hardboard with a jigsaw, these are glued against small wood blocks, On the first section shown here, the hardboard formers are quite close together, on the later open frame sections I made MISTAKE number 4. The formers here are placed too far apart which means that the hillsides tend to sag between each ridge, not good! I then used a glue gun to create a lattice of cardboard strips cut from a cereal packet glued over these forms this is followed by three layers of impregnated plaster bandages placed over the top.

This white plaster is painted brown, before using a blend of different static grasses to create the base greenery. I started off using a tea strainer type applicator, don’t bother doing this. Being too stingy to buy a Grassmaster, I ended up using a cheapo Chinese copy. It works but the results are a bit uneven, and it is difficult to be precise. As a finishing touch Woodland scenic’s moorland mixture and static grass tufts then add texture to the base layers to create the illusion of weeds.

I have tried different forms for hedges, Jarvis hedges are a bit too solid for my liking Though they are what is still in use at the moment around roads. I have made some more ragged hedges by using lichen rolled into shaped sprayed with glued and rolled in a mixture of various Noch leaves. I have then used small pieces of seafoam as small bushes and trees in this hedgerow and I am quite pleased with the results.