Physicsman

Yes, Neil, I can see where you are coming from. Despite numerous manoeuvres, including contortions worthy of an Olympic gymnast (!!), it was pretty difficult to obscure a lot of the extraneous Bunker background. The diorama will soon be going into a temporary hibernation to allow space for the Hell Ghyll Sidings project, but a backdrop - as suggested - will be ideal. Especially when the northern hemisphere spring/summer arrives with improved (ha ha) weather and lighting - so I can set the diorama up outside. Jeff

Finally, a loco on the diorama...

A few pics, if anyone is passing this way....

Trust you to dig that out! I had a few broom plants in my first garden. It used to be fun as the seed pods exploded in summer. But a bit short-lived, so I have no more. A nice feature, with gorse, in 4mm, or one of the many low flowering yellow plants. And they add something in amongst the many shades of green!

I'll be taking a large batch of different pics of the diorama tomorrow, but here are three from earlier this evening with a few yellow flowering plants added.

Hi Neil. Very pleased you've managed to get started with your project, given the time constraints you've been working under over the last year. You have clearly found a project that you really enjoy so any feelings of tedium with the minutiae of the task probably don't exist. And I agree, being "obsessive" is very rewarding. The term "obsessive" is a bit of a put-down. You aspire to produce a high quality product and that's to be applauded. Good for you. Better than being complacent and settling for mediocrity. There are some modellers on this Forum who could do with a dose of your attitude. Some layouts, built by very experienced modellers, are a load of crap because they continue to do the same thing, year after year. Ok, it's their project, but what's the point? I think your 3D skills will lead you into areas you haven't yet considered - fun guaranteed for years! As for my walling. Yes, some will be changed, but only a couple of metres worth. I've just cleared out storage space for the next layout (HGS), due late March/April. Can I suggest you start a thread? Put it in the S&C section if you like and don't feel obliged to continually update it. Again, quality counts, not countless posts with continuous repeats and no substance. Go for it! Jeff.

That's an interesting point and a valid suggestion. A project for a time when I return to the diorama, I think. I like your idea, but I think it'd require at least 3 half trees at that end and, for the moment, I want to be doing something different.... .... So this afternoon I'm going to be rearranging my storage under the boards as it's a real mess under there. Not modelling, but looking forward to it!

Hi Ade. I could say good morning, as it's just past 2am. Glad you're enjoying the project. If recommend you find an excuse to model some trees as it's great fun and very satisfying. I've been putting off having a go for a few years and I'm annoyed I didn't try earlier. I've just been looking at photos of the area around the old Ais Gill signal box and was pleased to find there's opportunities to build a few - maybe 10-30 foot - specimens in the planned Hell Ghyll Sidings layout. As for the diorama. A little bit more work on the vegetation, another smallish tree and the telegraph poles. And that'll be that! Jeff.

Yes, if you're working at around 21mm to the foot then a 30 foot tree, as in the ones on my diorama, is going to be 2 feet tall. Wow! That will be great fun to build - if you can get the wire. I used 30cm-ish lengths of florist wire, rather than taking it off a reel. I also used 28AWG. You could use, say, 22AWG for rigidity on the first foot, then solder some thinner stuff onto those strands. Or maybe you have a ready-made supply of longer length wire? I'll be building at least another 2 40' and 2 30' trees for the station area. Might try and model a proper species using some published branch profiles. It's a great hobby when something we've never done - wire trees in my case - become a real pleasure to make.

I'm no artist, but I still enjoyed creating a backscene for the diorama (actually 2 x 60cm boards). Pics attached.

I put a link to a very useful tree-making video on the Glorious Steam diorama thread. This is so good that I'll also put the link here: Agree with comments about the performance of the Forum this week. Andy York has enough on his plate with other issues, but I know the Forum performance and advert "problems" have been driving him nuts.

Morning Steve, Brian. Thanks for your comments, always appreciated. Trees are one of those things that we are told are greatly under-modelled on layouts, and I'm as guilty of this as anybody. Though modelling my area of S&C does get me off the hook a bit, as it has less trees than a lot of other places. I've bought-in some trees for previous layouts, but decided it was time to build some of my own. Not only is it a LOT cheaper, but it's a lot of fun - even if it does take time. The bigger trees in the diorama probably took me about 5 hours each. These trees are pretty generic. At some stage I'll have a look at some templates for specific species, such as oak, birch and sycamore. There are many good guides to making trees on YouTube. I'd recommend anything done by Luke Towan. But my favourite is from "Geek Gaming Scenics", link below. If this doesn't inspire you to have a go, nothing will!

Agree with all your comments, Jay. It's especially frustrating when after submitting posts, the post doesn't actually save. I know it's ten years ago, but this Forum was a VERY active place. Just the way of the world, I suppose! J.

Some pics of the diorama with the trees in place. Jobs still to do: add some coloured flowers, add telegraph poles, one more tree, paint a backscene. So that's a couple of day's work. Then I can finally pose some locos.

Hi Rob. These are my first wire wound efforts. Great fun, but I'd definitely use sea foam onto the armatures. Time consuming but worth it! Jeff

Thanks, Andy. Agree, the Forum is much quieter than it used to be - though I also spend a tiny fraction of the time on here compared to 10 years ago! Here's a duplicate set of the diorama pics I've just stuck on GS. I won't do any more duplication.

A shot of an ongoing diorama with a longer section of the stone walling featured on the previous page of this thread. Wire-wound trees have been added in today. The diorama is meant as a photo-stage: a section of my S&C layout Gill Head is in the background. Jeff.

I've been posting a lot of stuff on my diorama thread for the last month. Some action will resume on here in a short while. Either people are unaware of the Glorious Steam thread (diorama) or are fed up with the scenic work and don't want to look (!!), but I'll post today's picture-posts from GS onto here, in case some of you ARE interested. Here's the first, a collection of pics showing a 12cm wire wound armature as it transitions to a "tree". For further details, have a look at the diorama thread.

Evolution of a 12cm tall tree in pictures....

Rob, I KNEW the trunk of that tree reminded me of something, but couldn't put my finger on it. They say that (most) modellers have keen observational skills and the ability to see laterally to solve problems. It looks like said modellers are attracted to THIS thread (maybe by the "promise" of chocolate sweets from Uncle Jeff?)! Good. You keep me on my toes. And Rob, I've had a totally mad idea. You don't fancy building an 8 foot viaduct using home-made DAS clay bricks, do you? Lol. J.

I've made a couple of new tree armatures today which will go onto the diorama with the sea foam treatment. Here are a couple of views showing the trees in skeletal form in situ on the diorama (I fitted amputated-nail spigots) and a close-up of one of the armatures - it's had 4 latex coats and cork texture added. Both trees have been painted and await foliage (tomorrow).

Evening Chip. Thanks for that photo. I look forward to building a wall like that alongside my new China Clay based Cornish layout...... .....oh, yeh!? No chance - and not because of the wall! Jeff.

And to add to the tree discussion above, here's a couple of diorama-related pics.

Here are some tree pics. Let me say from the start that I WAS quite happy with using trees on the diorama using WS Polyfibre until I tried the sea foam technique. Pics 1 and 2: The largest of the trees for the diorama. This is about 12cm tall, twisted wire armature/4-5 latex coats/acrylic coating/polyfibre onto branches/WS fine turf and 2mm grass fibres onto fibre, after using hairspray.... Pics 3 and 4: Here's the 16cm tree, not intended for the diorama but, being slightly larger, supposedly more amenable to using sea foam as a foliage base than polyfibre. After seeing the results from this I'm going to make a couple of additional 12/10cm trees and use sea foam as a base - those trees will then go on the diorama instead of the polyfibre ones. Twisted wire armature/5 latex coats/surface treatment with ground cork/acrylic topping/sea foam pieces superglued onto branch ends (fiddly - took me about 3 hours)/repeated hairspray with predominantly WS coarse turf and topping of WS fine turf sprinkled on.... My philosophy on modelling..... I'm very happy to be self-critical and laugh at some of the nutty things I get up to - as in the previous posts. I'm NOT an obsessive for detail. HOWEVER, what I think is that you should ALWAYS be aiming to improve on what you do. If you discover a new technique, or refine an old one - if it IMPROVES what you did before, consider re-doing the job or use the new method in future. The polyfibre trees are fine - they'll be used somewhere on GH. The existing walling on GH is fine - more than adequate for purpose. BUT, I now know that I can build a better tree (providing it's big enough) using sea foam, and my walling can be a LOT better. So that's what I'll TRY to do. I f*ck it up like everyone, there are probably better methods I don't yet know of and there are CERTAINLY much better modellers out there..... But my philosophy is to always try my best. I simply cannot understand why anyone would model something in a crap way and be prepared to accept it. Unless they were planning on giving it to someone else/selling it (and why would you sell crap to anybody?) Sorry to go on, but I felt the need to explain why I choose to do some things some people think are "crackers"!! Jeff.

Update on the diorama. I've "completed" the trees, including foliage. Well I thought I had. All was OK until I put the foliage onto the large (non-diorama) tree. This used sea foam attached to the armature, then foliage added. The diorama ones, being smaller, used polyfibre. The sea foam one is... I'll post pics later and you can draw your own conclusions!