Aston On Clun. A forgotten Great Western outpost.

[Winslow Boy]

Looks great to me Rob. How you going to secure it the layout if you don't mind me asking? The only reason is because if your having trouble holding it now what's going to happen when it's on site?

 

Whilst out today I kept looking at ash trees and i noticed that they don't have very fine tips at the end of there branches. Don't know if this helps but I thought I throw it into the mix.

[MrWolf]

The central twist of wires in the trunk has been left as a 25mm long spike which when glued into the hole in the scenery will keep it upright. The outer wires have been cut short and bent to represent the roots.

 

I'm slowly building up the thickness of the branches until the twists in the wires disappear. Some commercial wire trees still have the twists showing under the "bark" and it's a dead giveaway I think.

[Captain Kernow]

You may consider sinking a piece of brass or plastic tube into the landscape, as an even more secure way of ensuring that the tree remains where you want it to be. If trees are ever meant to be removable (eg. for a portable layout), this method also makes that a lot easier.

 

[MrWolf]

That's a good idea, thanks. I've got some plastruct tubing I will probably never use I can sink into the styrene landscape former with PVA as the plaster is only about 6mm thick at most.

[MAP66]

44 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

The central twist of wires in the trunk has been left as a 25mm long spike which when glued into the hole in the scenery will keep it upright. The outer wires have been cut short and bent to represent the roots.

 

I'm slowly building up the thickness of the branches until the twists in the wires disappear. Some commercial wire trees still have the twists showing under the "bark" and it's a dead giveaway I think.

Depends on the tree your modelling, but I have found that masking tape wrapped tightly around the trunk and some of the larger limbs of the armature helps smooth out and disguise the wire profiles. The filler or gloop can still be applied over the top.

 

For the final bark detailing and for other detailing such as broken off tree limbs and scarring etc. I use a much stiffer mix as its better to work with using sculpting tools or your fingers. That broken off tree limb on the image below is just moulded filler. If you’re a tea drinker, save the dust you get from the bottom of the box of tea bags as its very useful for sprinkling onto stiffer wet filler to add extra bark texture. I use it at the junction of main branches where it joins the trunk, like in image below (it’s the brown stuff). That’s the same Oak I showed earlier, before the extra wire and sea foam was added.

 

Once fully dried, the tea dust reacts well when overpainted with thinned down acrylics and helps give the effect of bark textures. When you get to the painting stage, something else good to have at your disposal is MIG sun bleach filter, I use several coats of this as a final stage to painting and weathering to give a mossy green tinge effect to certain areas of a tree.

 

Just for reference, the paler textured areas of the trunk and branches are the result of applying deep gap filler by hand from the tub with a small amount of dilute pva which helps it adhere to the plastic armature. This method was used for the main trunk and larger branches. I found that it dries with that texture which is very helpful. I used a slightly more dilute filler mix and applied by brush to the smaller type upper branches and upper trunk.

 

[MrWolf]

That's a marvelous piece of work and definitely something to aim for. 

Thanks to the Memsahib we have quite a selection of tea in our house, so I'll be pinching that idea. I've already used dried, used tealeaves for ground cover / bark chippings etc and it works well.

 

 

Tealeaves under the saw horse, tealeaves and real soil in the garden and the manure in the pit and wheelbarrow is shotgun cartridge wadding.

[MAP66]

15 hours ago, MrWolf said:

That's a marvelous piece of work and definitely something to aim for. 

By the way Rob, your wire tree armature is looking absolutely superb. Most of the trees I’ve made started as plastic tree armatures with wire and sea foam grafted on. I have however, made a couple of trees using just wire for the armature and it looked exactly like yours at this stage. You’re probably thinking, as I did, that how can this twisted lump of wire turn out to be a convincing looking tree? Don’t worry or be deterred, it’s meant to look like that at this stage and it WILL turn out absolutely magnificent in the end. Keep on following Gordons book and keep the progress pics coming. 🌳

[MrWolf]

Thanks Mark, I've applied a couple more layers of bark mix and it's filled out a lot of areas.

I've a few hollows to fill and lumps to carve off but I think that it's nearly ready for the top coat and a little texture.

 

[MAP66]

Nice work, its already looking very good indeed, are you having fun?

[Captain Kernow]

2 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Thanks Mark, I've applied a couple more layers of bark mix and it's filled out a lot of areas.

I've a few hollows to fill and lumps to carve off but I think that it's nearly ready for the top coat and a little texture.

 

That looks just splendid!

 

[lezz01]

I'm a big fan of elm trees myself. They're very seldom modelled due to the fact that you don't see them very often nowadays due to the 1960s outbreak of Dutch elm disease plus the height of them of course. My primary school had them all around the playing field there must have been 25 to 30 of them all over 100ft and we came back after the summer break one year and they had all been cut down it was very sad.

Regards Lez.   

[chuffinghell]

Get your 'groan' button at the ready guys....

 

tree-mendous

 

(there's always one and it's usually me)

 

Edited December 12, 2023 by chuffinghell

[MrWolf]

34 minutes ago, lezz01 said:

I'm a big fan of elm trees myself. They're very seldom modelled due to the fact that you don't see them very often nowadays due to the 1960s outbreak of Dutch elm disease plus the height of them of course. My primary school had them all around the playing field there must have been 25 to 30 of them all over 100ft and we came back after the summer break one year and they had all been cut down it was very sad.

Regards Lez.   

 

They are an impressive tree for sure, though I think that anything 400mm tall might just overpower the scenery. All I remember of elms were the dead barkless trunks everywhere and even those are gone now.

[MrWolf]

3 hours ago, MAP66 said:

Nice work, its already looking very good indeed,

 

Thanks, much appreciated!

 

3 hours ago, MAP66 said:

are you having fun?

 

Yes, I'm working on my motorbike! 🤣

[lezz01]

10 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

 

They are an impressive tree for sure, though I think that anything 400mm tall might just overpower the scenery. All I remember of elms were the dead barkless trunks everywhere and even those are gone now.

Yeh that's the two main reasons they don't appear on layouts. They do tend to dominate the landscape but back in the day they were everywhere. The ash is going the same way due to ash dieback now. The loss of any species of tree is very sad imo. The thing about trees and model railways is that very few people do them justice, trees are huge and they do dominate the landscape everywhere. Oaks are indeed mighty and when did you ever see a full size Horse Chestnut on a layout? Most of the trees modelled on 4mm layouts would be considered weedy in 2mm scale never mind 4mm. The majority of people only really see city trees which are mainly Plain Service Trees or Limes, neither of which a very tall species, oh there are a few bigger trees in parks but out in the countryside larger species dominate but they don't seem quite as big because they aren't seen next to things most people have a decent reference to size wise. There are a few nice proper sized trees that I can see from out living room window and they tower over the tenement type buildings behind them and they are 5 stories high.     

Regards Lez.

[drmditch]

Somewhere I may have a (film) photograph of a sunset through the Elms at the bottom of the garden of the house I grew up in.

They were magnificent.

Also lovely were the Red Squirrels that played in the trees round my school, providing a distraction from Maths lessons.

(Not that this was entirely a good thing!)

[Winslow Boy]

3 hours ago, lezz01 said:

Yeh that's the two main reasons they don't appear on layouts. They do tend to dominate the landscape but back in the day they were everywhere. The ash is going the same way due to ash dieback now. The loss of any species of tree is very sad imo. The thing about trees and model railways is that very few people do them justice, trees are huge and they do dominate the landscape everywhere. Oaks are indeed mighty and when did you ever see a full size Horse Chestnut on a layout? Most of the trees modelled on 4mm layouts would be considered weedy in 2mm scale never mind 4mm. The majority of people only really see city trees which are mainly Plain Service Trees or Limes, neither of which a very tall species, oh there are a few bigger trees in parks but out in the countryside larger species dominate but they don't seem quite as big because they aren't seen next to things most people have a decent reference to size wise. There are a few nice proper sized trees that I can see from out living room window and they tower over the tenement type buildings behind them and they are 5 stories high.     

Regards Lez.

The place to go to see really big, and I mean twenty metres plus trees is the square mile. They have dozens of them, or used to have as it's a few years since I was there. They are London plane, platanus and we're planted because they shed there bark so weren't affected by the soot from all the chimneys. Many years ago had to survey them all and got in some unusual places.

[lezz01]

The problem out in the suburbs is they tend to pollard the trees every 5 years or so and they don't really grow to their natural height. Having said that there is a large sycamore on the pavement right next to the carpark that they don't pollard which is very nice although the seeds play havoc with my pond. It's home to a colony of magpies with several nests and spring can be a bit noisy as they DO NOT like my big cat going down the wall towards the far end of the carpark. He's a hunter and will go for their chicks but mostly he brings me mice and rats...quite large rats sometimes.....not always dead rats either.....I've become quite accomplished at catching large live rats without getting bitten as it happens...I've also had a little more than my share of shots up at the hospital before I got the hang of catching the bu**ers as well. But what can you do a cat will always be a cat right.

Regards Lez.     

[Gopher]

7 hours ago, lezz01 said:

The problem out in the suburbs is they tend to pollard the trees every 5 years or so and they don't really grow to their natural height. Having said that there is a large sycamore on the pavement right next to the carpark that they don't pollard which is very nice although the seeds play havoc with my pond. It's home to a colony of magpies with several nests and spring can be a bit noisy as they DO NOT like my big cat going down the wall towards the far end of the carpark. He's a hunter and will go for their chicks but mostly he brings me mice and rats...quite large rats sometimes.....not always dead rats either.....I've become quite accomplished at catching large live rats without getting bitten as it happens...I've also had a little more than my share of shots up at the hospital before I got the hang of catching the bu**ers as well. But what can you do a cat will always be a cat right.

Regards Lez.     

I hate rats and Magpies.  The Magpies in our vicinity take Blackbird and Hedge Sparrow chicks.  Never saw many Magpies when I was a kid. Probably because farmers etc controlled them.  Now they are everywhere.  Our old tom cat has a bit of a stand off with them from  time to time, over food.  The Magpies win, and seem to work in pairs.  One in front of him and one behind him.  I hate Magpies (Have I l already said that).

 

I would not fancy trying to catch a live rat Lez.  Respect to you.  I used to shoot them as a lad.      

[MrWolf]

A view from the roof here which shows how big even pollarded trees can get (though this one hasn't been cut back in years)

 

 

I think that the problem with modelling trees is one of proportion. If we do model a full size 90-100 foot tree in the kind of space most of us have for our layout, it looks grossly overscale for some reason. I've gone for a happy medium of 160mm and it still fills the corner into which it's planted.

 

Fortunately we don't see many magpies here, the old part of town is home to jackdaws and a few herring gulls that don't tolerate them at all. They even keep the flying rats (town pigeons) away.

 

Neither of us like rats, we used to have a lot at the old house thanks to a few scruffy neighbours that used their back yard as a tip. Occasionally they'd sweep it all out into the access lane and wait until someone complained to the council.

 

We've got bait boxes here, provided by the management and I've only seen one big rat in the garage when we first moved in, that lost an argument with a crowbar and I've not seen any sign of rat activity since. I doubt that they're far away though!

[drmditch]

I like Magpies, and all the Corvids really.

They are clever and sociable birds.

I hope you speak to them properly!

 

When I was bedridden (for a short while a few years ago) Magpies would come and look at me through the window.

(Probably checking up to see if I had died and if so could they get in and harvest the eyeballs!) 

 

They do work in pairs. It was quite worrying a few years ago watching a pair persecuting a Hedgehog.

I suppose one should support one's fellow mammals against the Dinosaurs (evolved), and I was trying to help the Hedgehog anyway. I suspect its initial injury came from either Rats (Ratus Norwegicus) or a Human ( Sapiens - so called) with a Strimmer. I don't particularly like Rats, but they are clever, social, and adaptable as well.

 

Also a few years ago I had a pair of Crows who were regulars in my garden. The big (male?) bird worked out how to demolish the bird feeders intended for the smaller birds so that they fell to the ground and the Crows could take the contents. It was lovely to see the male and female (slightly smaller) birds dancing together.

I've probably posted on Rmweb somewhere about this. A bit later they brought their offspring to the garden as well

 

The real, beautiful, and sometimes savage world just outside my window!

I haven't seen the Sparrowhawk this year.

Edited December 13, 2023 by drmditch

[Winslow Boy]

Didn't someone say that in urban areas your only ever six feet away from a rat. To be honest I'm not surprised because we do leave food around whether deliberately or accidentally.

 

Pollard trees are very susceptible to dying, due to the shock, so really should only be done very infrequently. What is more often seen is a crown reduction. The trouble begins when people start moaning about not receiving a TV signal and want all the new growth removing every year.

[MrWolf]

I find crows quite fascinating, they're very clever birds. We had one that was always in our garden when I was a child.

If I was messing around in the garage it would perch on top of the fluorescent light as a hint for food. It was partial to cheese sandwiches and would perch on my shoulder like a parrot until the snack was all gone. 

 

[Gopher]

1 hour ago, drmditch said:

I like Magpies, and all the Corvids really.

They are clever and sociable birds.

I hope you speak to them properly!

I have to agree.  I like Crows and my wife befriended a Carrion Crow a few years ago which used to leave her little presents on the door step.   It would also sit on next doors garage roof and look into our bathroom.  It also used to tap on our bedroom roof (dormer bedroom) - if it thought we should get up to feed it.  Very clever birds   

 

I actually salute the first (single) Magpie I see in the morning.  Given my comments in the post above - I am clearly confused about my feelings.    I still hate rats though 

[MrWolf]

The postie has just delivered this from WWS. Never used seafoam before, but I'm already thinking of using the smaller bits for a hazel copse.