A small bit of scenic work has been going on at The Mound, to provide a bit more scope for photography. There was little landscaping in front of the branch line, which limited what I could do with the camera, so an extension was knocked up to hopefully remedy this. In common with other recent work it overhangs the baseboard structures , so is made of Fomeboard for lightness. Once built and braced this is surprisingly robust, and to date has stood up to the usual knocks and bumps with no real damage.

One or two pictures to set the scene- what existed before, showing the small amount of scenic area. These are real warts and all views, with the layout seen in its squashed reality, so please excuse the mess and cramped conditions.

And the add-on backscene that I was trying out to add more viewpoints.

Construction is self-explanitory.

The control panel had to be re-sited- each connection needed lenghtened; fortunatally the main controls are at Kyle, which would have been a nightmare to alter.

The base was filled with a diluted PVA soaked torn newspaper mulch and coated with Polyfilla readymix and then given a sealing coat of green acrylic.

The ground cover is various static grasses, applied with a Grassmaster, built up in layers until I felt I had done enough. The inital dusting was put onto a coat of acrylic and further ones were held in place with a mixture of Copydex or spray glue(PVA based from a pump bottle) as required. The copydex was better at adding small additions of grasses- I found that the sprayed glue went where it shouldn't, even with masking.

Two shots of grass growing

A close-up of a bush of some sort- Woodland Scenics foliage covered with Noch leaves.

And long grass at the lineside fence.

Finally, as it is at the moment; I am still tweaking it and doing some gardening here and there, but it gives a bit extra to the scene.