So the on-going tree project is .. on-going. The trees looked quite nice with just the green poly stuff, but driving round it looked not very typical of an English tree in summer, so I ordered some Gaugemaster 'leaves' in a summery dark green. I teased out the poly a bit more to get those fly-away ends so hated by hairdressers, then gave it a good spray with 20% PVA and then essentially tipped the leaves on - the more you put on the more sticks it's seems. It looked good, but turning the tree upside down and tipping on more really filled out the foliage and made a huge difference. Not much made it to the floor!

These look altogether more treey than before. It would have been nice to have a second shade slightly lighter to mix in - I tried some flock, but... it looked a bit naff. The day-glow green lichen, on the right, looks a hell of a lot better for having black and brown chalk grated (with razor saw) onto it and then given a spray of water. The signalman's coal bunker is ready to go (re-painted Ten Commandments ballast bunker), the relay cabinet for the 'point heaters' is done (perhaps a bit too dark grey as I was trying to add age) and the lampman's lamp oil barrel with tap and stand is ready for his hut to turn up at some point.

There's more trees in production, including a Bright Idea I had, namely that, as a rule, trees on model railways tend to be rather small. To this end I ascertained that a mature oak can be around 100 to 120ft tall and decided to make one. After five rolls of wire (took hours), two coats of PVA/brown poster paint (took even more hours), a coating of DAS clay (many, many more hours) a finally a coat of Humbrol Dark Earth (yet more hours) it was done. There's no way the late JC's dad did it all in six days!

Another duff photo, but you can get an idea of the size of the dammed thing! THis was before being attacked with the chalks to 'weather' it. Plan A was to have three of these, so now it's Plan B. This will be just about the last thing to be placed on the north end of the layout, because it will get in the way of everything else.

The lichen before and after.

Full size trees are definitely full size...

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