A quiet moment at the level crossing as Warship D836 Powerful rumbles past on a stopping passenger train.

Slow progress of late, but I've begun to set the new pub into its surroundings and generally work on reinstating some
of the background scenery which was removed during the big alterations to this part of the layout last year. All quite
satisfying and low-tech messy work, the kind I like.

My trees are very quick and basic entities using the Woodland Scenics plastic armatures. I bend them to shape, give them
a thick going over with grey/brown acrylic paint, bung some superglue onto the branches and then fix on several tufty bits of
Woodland Scenics poly-fibre, which is versatile stuff and because it's so fibrous and easily stretched out, one bag
goes a long way. I then give the trees a whack of hairspray and sprinkle on some leaves which in practise
can be any small, green-ish scenic scatter type thing. Finally, another blast of spray and the trees can be set in place.
Some of the surrounding trees aren't trees at all, but just blobs of poly-fibre with scatter on. Once the armatures are
painted, the individual trees take about ten minutes to prepare, so I generally do a batch of armatures one evening
and then the foliage on another. By painting the acrylic on quite thickly, some useful barky texture can be achieved on the
plastic surfaces, beneficial for a foreground tree.

For other types of tree, or a bit of variety, I've picked up some postiche in various shades, as well as various other
types of scatter material.