jukebox

Today's progress upstairs.

I've been able to open up work on multiple fronts, which is speeding things up nicely.

1/. Added a small hedge to the boundary between the two fields

2/. Gave the golf fence the weeds treatment - using a greener weed mix than along the boundary fence-line

It needs to be vacuumed up in that shot.

3/. Started adding the first layer of ground cover to the near side of the fairway:

4/. Finished adding the first layer of ground cover to the far side of the rough:

5/. Started adding the second layer of ground cover - long. deep, grass - to the back of the golf course land (again, not yet vacuumed):

Looking from a distance, the canvas is coming together...

Don't stress too much about how that long grass looks - that's the fresh PVA that hasn't gone off.  I'll also be working additional layers in to make those 2mm grass transitions that are so visible from on high, a lot less so.

***  

A few comments, thoughts, and observations.

Static grass goes *everywhere* when you apply it.  For that reason, I need to get as much of it down as possible before I put in vegetation that would look bad if it were "polluted" by later grassing.  That's why I have all of a sudden blitzed the grassing - I can't finish the cuttings until all but the fairway is down.

I have created some areas using a deader grass mix where the planned trees will go; there's nothing stopping me adding more after the fact.

I need to get in and detail the remainder of the embankment - up near the church.  That will have a lot less vegetation, probably some just weed tufts, and a stray shubbery.  The zone there is close to the church and retaining wall, and I do need to try and use some material/techniques that I used in the background, to reinforce the suggestion that the scenery has continuity.

Lastly, and a bit of an "oh, b*gger!" moment for me today...

I looked up from within the cloud of static fibres and PVA fumes that was filling the layout room, and noticed I have almost painted myself into a corner.  There's a wedge of real estate between the avoiding lines and the station tracks that I've not terra-formed:

That is sitting rather neatly *behind* the golf green, at the start of the cutting...

Things are not too dire; by removing a good portion of the ground cover tubs I have sat up that end, and plonking a pillow on the tracks to protect them, I can imitate a rather large fur seal, and lie on the layout there, to reach in and place some plaster and then come back and cover it with cinders;

At least it will give me a good opportunity to look at the cutting from track side, and be sure I am happy with it, too.

I'm sure there will be an excessive amount of profanity involved, so shall try not to do it on a Sunday.

Cheers

Scott

58 minutes ago, lezz01 said:

*snip*

As to what trees would look good there. I would go with a small stand of sycamores or silver birch it don't matter really because it's not natural. It's a golf course and it's all been landscaped, I would have the larger species further away from the normal viewing position and model them at 66% scale.

Regards Lez.           

That's interesting...  my perception is that for a golf course 1930-1960, that it would be created from it's surrounds, not as landscaped as we see today.  So, for instance, if the land acquired for the course had elms, there would be elms there...  and that only those trees that needed to be removed to create the fairway would be removed.

I could be wrong, and I guess in the real world, both scenarios played out.

By the 1970's and 80's, we had got to "designer golf courses" where the whole kit and caboodle was manufactured...

Cheers

Scott

You're probably going to hate me Jesse - but if you raised the mounting point by 100mm, then if your roof leaks, the water will flow down to the front, and away, not pond and flood the stock...

You're just trying to confuse me, aren't you, Julian?    I'm not quite sure what your conclusion was... but I *think* you're pointing out that even at 300mm, scaled to 1:76 and viewed from 1ft-6ft, the mind will see those trees as big?

I can offer the following:

What is fixed: I'd like some tall trees in that corner of the property - mentally, I see it as a visual break, that lifts the area from just another anodyne model railway hillside, to something special - and it's far enough away from the fairway, that it will not look out of place, because the canopy of the trees will go from around 100mm on the edge of the rough, up to 300mm by the fence-line.

To that end, elms are not set in stone. I just like the shape, plus I want to try and model a specific species, not just have "a tree".  Hint; I'm not overly happy with my "trees" elsewhere, but as they are to the rear of the layout, it's less critical for me.  These are very much up front.  And at eye level.  Are Elms a no-no for golf land? - even well away from the fairway?  I would have though in pre-Dutch Elm Disease days, if there were tall trees around the border of a property, they would have been left intact - it's not like people in the 1940's knew these would succumb to a disease in the 1960's....

Perversely, I could use poplars, and make *those* 300mm tall and get away with it.  But that's not what I had in mind.  Remembering too, that the bottles I used to depict height are solid. The trees will, if I bring my modelling A-game, be somewhat transparent, to allow a sense of depth looking through, or past them.  I'm actually happy to consider other species of tree...

I'd not considered vegetating the far side of the embankment...  though on of the corners near the gate could be planted.  For the reasons above, it's the unused land owned by the golf club that I'd planned on hosting mature growth.

There will indeed be smaller trees and shrubbery along the fence-line of the golf course, but closer to the hole. The distance from fairway to fence narrows to almost zero behind the green, so the canopy will get lower as it follows the fence to the hole.

Right now I'm still static grassing - there's a few days of that - and adding detail to the remainder of the cutting, as well as twisting up some smaller, non-descript trees for the fairway that I may try and tweak into more specific types.  I can't plant the blackberries until all the static grass by the fence is planted - it goes everywhere...

So we have time to discuss options here before I start.

Cheers,

Scott

18 hours ago, pirouets said:

Think both any of those would look good. Out of interest how much of the land between the fence line and the golf hole will they take up

Hi Steve - there's plenty of real estate up in that corner; those chalk marks in the lower left of the first photo show the edge of the rough; the fairway is the tiny triangle at the bottom of the shot.  Take a look in some of the following photos...

18 hours ago, lezz01 said:

A word of caution with Elm trees. Back in the 60's we had a little thing called Dutch Elm disease which killed or caused to be felled around 96% of all of the Elms in Great Britain I can't recall when it was exactly but we had huge Elms all around our school playing field and we broke up for the summer and when we came back they had ALL gone and I do mean all gone! There wasn't an Elm left in the whole of the county by September. The other thing about Elms is that they are very very tall. If you don't have them in Aus then you have no idea how tall they get. To do a Great Elm justice in 4mm you should be thinking 18"/450mm tall as they go to well over 100 ft. If they were in a jungle  they would be called canopy trees. They announced last year that they had succeeded in developing a strain of the Elm that was immune to the fungus carried by the beetle that caused all the problems so they should be soon making a come back. I do hope so I really miss Elms they are a very majestic tree.

Regards Lez.    

Hi Lez - yes, I was reading up about them; the Dutch Elm fiasco is quite fascinating.  And making them elms would be a nice anchor to my 1930-1960 timeline.

About the size...

Turns out I have seven armatures underway; these are florist wire, and because I knew I wanted tall trees, I've actually Araldite-ed the bases to maximise the height - the bunched wire is coated in epoxy, and the masking tape holds the bundle till the glue sets:

I started these a week ago; they are nice and dry now.  Checking the length....

450mm tall - potentially a 400mm tall tree, by the time you form a canopy.

But...

As I discovered when I created my hill, absolute scale doesn't always translate well on a model.  Let me illustrate.

I've used my collection of WS shaker bottles for reference; these approach 250mm high, and have the sort of height-to-width bulk that I'd expect an elm would, judging by those sample photos.  I'd probably go up to ~75mm higher.

Positioning them in a stand of seven in place on the hill results in this:

I know those aren't 100ft, but the reality is, too much higher starts to look "wrong".

They are still well clear of the fairway:

I will plant progressively smaller trees closer to the fairway to create a fairly substantial green band between the fairway and the railway.

Looking back up the hill, you can see the screen ~300mm elms would create:

And just to show what I mean by "looking wrong", here's my tape measure, extended to 400mm:

That's uncomfortably high....

And if I used trees that mature, I'd have to plant less of them, as they'd need to be wider...  that was my I liked the Australian Kauri's initially; their width to height ratios worked well for me.

I have no idea if I can even convincingly model an elm!  I guess I get seven goes at it. 

I shall do a bit of delving to see if anyone else has had a go online.  If all else fails it will be trial and error.

Cheers

Scott

Where the farm land gives way to the golf course, I'm planning on a stand of tall trees along the fence-line;

I'd spotted some unusual ones here in Perth, and was going to use those as inspiration, but it turns out they are native Australian trees...

Scratch that idea.

I went back to my copy of The Observers Book of North Yorkshire Trees, and I see elms listed as being found in the region. 

Which led me to look at a few photos online that seem promising...

This one, albeit in East Coker is appealing  (photo courtesy of Ptelea)

This fits the bill, too, but that might not be Great Britain... (David Hosking photo)

...and I'll just link to the final one, actually nearby Tyne and Wear:  Durham Elm

So we'll see how we go making tree armatures for a half dozen of these...

Cheers

Scott

So I've installed Peco fencing for this side of the cutting.

I cut off the elongated "prongs" on the Peco fencing - previous experience proved it is too hard to drill holes at the correct spacing when the land contours are not level -  and used Liquid Nails construction adhesive, applied with a toothpick to 75% of the post ends.  

This glue tacks very quickly, and binds to the static grass, so the fence is a bit resilient to knocks, which is handy.

The glue is brown, so if you had a fertile imagination, you could think it was the soil where the posts were drilled in...  but I go the extra mile.

I apply PVA to each of those brown glue spots, then also run a bead of PVA along the base of the fence-line - on both sides:

Then I take my Greenkeeper and apply a **very** generous cover of static grass "weeds" - this is a hodgepodge of 12mm long autumn grasses that I have kept specially for this task:

They don't go down particularly well, so I do make the cover heavy.  One take-away tub covers only 1m of fencing - but there's loads of excess for about 100mm either side of the fenceline...

Once the PVA is dry, I vacuum up the excess - about 95% of what you put down - and you're left with those glue spots nicely disguised as the longish dry grass that you might get from not being able to mow or plough hard up against the fence.  Even on the the lush green side, it doesn't look out of place:

And on the dry side, it's even better:

No obvious glue spots now.  

Ready for the blackberry bushes tomorrow... and I can also go back and add the rest of the fence toward the station.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Scott

Sort of like what the Blue Pullman would look like if it were a middle aged man - a lot of weight and bulk hanging low below the waistline, and a curved and naked hairline....

Hi Gilbert - can you comment on the provenance of the finish on 60013?  Is it a repaint, or another Timmed Hornby factory rework?

Cheers

Scott

As I alluded to a day or so ago, the gates at the far end of the cutting are even more fantastical than the one dealt with this week.

To wit:

It really was a bodge of an effort, simply because I gave no thought how those fence might meet in real life, or perhaps because that looked like some sort of rail reserve access...

Now I have a few tubs of blackberry bushes ready to plant, it wasn't a hard call to disguise that nonsense...

Much better.  Even from the reverse angle.

So where am I at?  Well I'm about ready to plant the blackberries on the near side.  But to do that, I really want the boundary fence in.  That will let me build up some long grass on either side of the fence *before* I plant blackberries.

The view from the helicopter looks like this:

I won't add too much more texture to the cutting before it's blackberry time - some weed clumps on the right will do it.  

I've taken the "finished" texture to the corner and am starting on static grass around the bend (leaning across the hill to do so)

Fence strainer post added on the up hill side to hang that gate off!

So next job is the fencing along the top, then some dry grass to match the far side.

Cheers

Scott

A bit of an excursion, this afternoon.

There's no "right" way to create ground cover.  One of the things I am really enjoying is experimenting with things, or making mistakes and trying to rectify them and getting a good result.

The down side is that areas I created 2 years ago sometimes no longer satisfy me - and I may go back a give them a tweak, to "lift" them to the standard I am working to now.

Over where the golf course property meets the station, I though I'd try stick coarse flock to the plaster, not static grass.  I wanted to suggest longer, unkept ground cover.

When I stuck the first layer on, it didn't cover 100%, and the brown plaster was visible.  I added more glue in the worst areas, and reapplied - it came out looking quite good - like low shubbery...

I then wondered: what if I had applied static grass over the top of the flock????

Well this is what you get:

It comes up looking like weedy grass!

The olive-green flock is the slope to the station - I haven't treated that beyond a single flock layer.  Yet.

Here's area with the double layer of flock:

I could get a similar effect using the heavier "bushes" or "clump foliage" product from Woodland Scenics... and still might.  There's low trees and shrubs to go in here on both sides of the fenceline...

But this is one of those happy experiments where I didn't just want a flat green surface, and have managed just that by literally playing with the materials I had.

If it had looked wrong, I'd have grabbed a putty knife and lifted it off.

Don't be scared to experiment.  It's only a train set!

Cheers,

Scott

Apparently, you can bat both ways when it comes to gates...

My way:

Or the other way...

It's not ideal, Gordon, but I set it up so it's hung from the high side (I believe the diagonal on the hinge always has to be at the top - otherwise it's not supported in any way). 

I should go back and add a strainer post next to the hedge.

Don't ask about the double gates at the far end of the cutting.  They're on an even worse slope; One of the perils of horizontal compression...

A lot of that fence is "compromised" - it's Ratio fencing, which is rigid.  Looks fine as a backdrop until you examine it too closely.  I will use Peco fencing on the nearer side, which is more fiddly to install, but can be set correctly with posts closer to vertical on undulating ground.

24 hrs later...

The clover came up nicely:

So much so that I decided there needed to be a touch more in that field.  And yes, I did add a touch more blackberry bush:

..and to keep the continuity, I added some on the field closest to the layout edge.  Because this is a lot closer, I went from a single colour flock, to using two shades:

We'll have a look tomorrow to see how that vacuums up.

The gateway also came up okay.  From above it looks a bit flock-stuck-on-static-grass:

But from ground level or at normal viewing distances, it works:

The tufts in the cutting lost a lot of volume, and are more subtle now:

The green shading I applied to the far side has also given me a result to be happy with...

So much so that I have gone back and added a similar treatment to the far side, so make both embankments looks "as one"

***

The last tweak involved some critique from Science Major eldest son.

"There's a mistake in your backscene.  The haze blue mountain occurs in the far distance.  You can't have it in front of the dark mountain..."

He's right.

So the tree there grew a bit..

..and all was good with the world.

Cheers

Scott

Just be careful with that bucket, Brian.

Those cup hooks are creating point loading.

As the bucket fills, the force gets stronger - and you may get three low points at each of the hooks.  The water will pond there, soften the plasterboard, and...  Deneside may suffer a biblical inundation.

Stay safe.

Cheers

Scott

Bit of a hodge-podge today. 

I've a few things on the go, but rather than roll them up, I'll show some unfinished business...

Once I populate the golf course, leaning over to the far side scenery will be... problematic.  So I'm adding a few details that I'd planned to do, but not got around to, until today...

First up - the meadow across the tracks looked a bit homogeneous.  So I'm adding flock to suggest a patch or three of clover.

That's flock on PVA, painted on top of the static grass - I'll vacuum it up, and what's left should do the trick.

Next up, some mud around the gateway:

Fine dirt over the static grass.  May need a second application - will find out when I vacuum the surplus away.

The cutting itself seems a little bland.  Having said that, when I look at period photos of Stoke, the embankment there is... bland, too.

My compromise was to add a handful of weed tufts.

Start with ~5mm drops of PVA...

The roll some "weed mix" between the thumb and finger till the strands align.  Take it with tweezers and plant it in the wet PVA:

They are a little "bushy" but again, a vacuum up should take away some of that volume.

And some blackberry bush on the far embankment:

That white just visible is the PVA.  I *might* add another clump to the top left... will see how it appears with fresh eyes tomorrow.

On the near side, I've been adding texture; some soil and greener grass here and there - this was after a SG application, so there's a lot of loose material that need to be cleaned up, but it's coming to life now.  Blackberries over the top of that later in the week. A boundary fence, too.  Some base layer 4mm static grass is visible beside the fairway...

Cheers

Scott

Thanks very much Khris - there are some very talented people here on RMWeb, and I consider myself lucky to have access to their advice and opinions.  I'm not obsessive about my layout - I want to have fun building it, and fun operating it. I do find it relaxing going upstairs for a couple of hours at a time to move things along.  And when I'm closer to be being done, I'm looking forward to photographing trains in the landscapes I have created.

Cheers

Scott

I think you're on the right track, AyJay.

The end of my world:

This is an overhead view when it was under construction:

Cheers

Scott

55 minutes ago, kandc_au said:

Glad you have the money if you only winced

I don't have the money - which is why I'm not buying pre-made foliage mats, but doing it all myself!  That, and it appeals to my artistic side.

But seriously, scenicing a 7m x 4m layout can never be a frugal proposition - as I've observed, when you start doing *anything* on a room-scale layout, the quantities you use are eye watering.  I'll come close to incorporating 90Kg of hydrocal on Stockrington, and am about to buy my 35th litre of PVA this afternoon.     

I'd guess I have 30 or so bags of different static grasses, and a similar number of flocks.   The thing is, that spend is spread out over 2 years - I started flocking in March 2018, apparently - which takes much of the pain out of it.

Having said that, until this year, I've purchased my ground cover directly from the UK, and the price has been pretty manageable. The Javis scatters I used were £2.20/bag plus postage.  Even last weekend, buying locally, the bag of Peco summer grass I got for $10 was my most expensive item - the Noch fibres and blackberry leaves (actually "Forest Floor" scatter) were $5-$8 each.  Ex-the UK, they'd have been about 2/3 that... but who knows when they might arrive Down Under.

Hard to say, but looking at that vid, and counting the different containers he had lying around, I'd estimate Mr.Bennett spent more on ground cover for that one embankment area than I have in total!   

"You pays your money, you takes your choices"!

Thanks for that, Khris.  My OCD tendencies were struggling with him (!) - so many things partly done, and areas that he was going back to.  But whatever works for the individual, I guess.

His end results look pretty good - that variety of textures is important, I think - but I winced at the prices of the products he was using.  I guess that's the time-cost-quality triangle at work. 

I need to spend some time watching some of my reference videos, to get a sanity check on what NE England looked like int he 1950's and 60's.

Cheers,

Scott

Much better:

Again, just placed for observation.

In close up:

I have made a large batch of smaller, and airyer, bushes, and will set them in place tomorrow.  I will plant a couple of the left hand embankment - it will balance things - but most till go on the right hand side.

Cheers

Scott

Here in Australia, our Magpies have an entirely different reputation to that of Bower Bird.

They strike fear into young school children - and some adults -  every September.  With good reason.

I've certainly had blood drawn - ironically, on a golf course, when I was caddying for a bit of pocket money.

*chuckle*

That's one of the first times for me here on RMWeb my "ethnicity" has perhaps caused some confusion or lack of clarity! To be honest, I didn't even notice my use of Aussie jargon...

Yes, here in Oz, a bowerbird is someone who collects random items - named after the native bird that does the same as a courtship ritual:

On 04/04/2020 at 00:57, pirouets said:

Its not your PC Gordon as I had the same issue but as you say, fairly straight forward to follow and thinking where might I be able to try that. 

 

Scott, 2 truly important questions

- How many takeaway's got eaten to store your scenic materials?

- What is the take way of choice for Stockrington? (Here at Pirouets Palace it would be Curry, Chinese or Thai in those)

 

More importantly you get a good sense of scale of what you are working on from that picture as well which sometimes gets lost when zooming in to a small area like the green.

Ha!  I was waiting for someone to make an observation about that.  

The lady who is now my companion of two+ years, and who has been wonderfully supportive of this endeavour, saw my ragtag assortment of ice cream tubs and Moccona jars that I had blended and stored my different ballast shades in when she first visited the layout.  She made the observation that she was something of a bower bird, and had bulk purchased empty take away containers, and would I like some?  I took 20 off her hands, and when I'd used all those, she delivered a shopping bag with another 100 or so!

They have been an absolute blessing, and I thoroughly endorse them as being close to essential for any large landscaping job.  The ability to see what shades you have available, and sort the static grasses into short, medium, and long, and the flocks and scatters into fine, medium, and coarse, is a god-send.  Take the blackberries - I was able to see I had no dark green fine flock, and so that was on my radar this morning.  And when I was messing around with some ground textures yesterday, I was able to gather three different shades of WS "undergrowth" (medium flock) to try layering with.  If those were in opaque ice cream tubs, I may have missed them, or spent 20 minutes looking.

In the absence of being blessed with a clever girlfriend, you can pick up 50 of them on eBay for around £8.  I can't recommend it enough. (Both, actually!)

Cheers

Scott

Those were very timely - and useful - references, Gordon.  Thank you very much.

I have been struggling for many months to produce reasonable looking low shubbery, with almost no success.  To wit:

First attempt last week.

Whilst only blutak'd in position, these are too flat, and too dense.  Lifeless.

(they will, however, find a home near the backscene...)

2nd attempt late last week - an improvement, but still not passing muster:

Adding static grass helped, but still wasn't what I am looking for. The volume, however, was an improvement...

And then a quick visit upstairs after watching the video you linked too got me to here:

Texturally, much better.  Still too monotone, but that was as a result of not using the right materials.  They look good up close, too - the photo doesn't quite show how fibreous they are.

Poly fibre. PVA glue. Paint. Fine flock.

It's perverse that I had all the right kit, but just didn't know how to use it properly.

Every time I had tried to apply glue to the poly-fibre, the nylon seemed to repel it, and nothing would stick.  When I could make it stick, using lots of glue, it clumped too much into a dense mass.

This time, I persevered by following the video, and although the fibre didn't seem coated, by using the finest flocks, they did stick.

***

At 9am this morning, when I saw my work from overnight had been a success, I went online to check my local hobby store.  Just two bags of poly fiber left in stock! 

Luckily, they are open from 11am on a Sunday, and so I made a 130km/2hr round trip dash up the freeway to grab them both.  With our State closing its borders tonight - even to residents - and international freight supply lines being hampered, there's no telling if this is something that may be hard to get a hold of in 6 weeks or 6 months time...  so I wanted to have plenty of raw material available.,

I also took the liberty of picking up some more appropriate shades of flock to create blackberries and brambles... and some very dark green static grass.

No prizes for guessing what I was up to this afternoon.

Cheers

Scott