Barry Melek Electric Train Sets

Scenery Landscape Scale

Simple Scenery Can Bring Your Model Railroad to Life

It's one thing to create an accurate layout of an old railroad line, with a couple of stations and perhaps a yard for fiddling. Adding realistic touches to your layout and weathering the buildings, can make it out of the ordinary! Every picture tells a story - how about every scene in your layout?

Prior to making your scenery permanent, you'll want to check your tracks and wiring to make sure everything is working correctly. Believe me, you don't want to be ripping up some scenery to make repairs to track or wiring.

One way to test your trackwork is to run several cars (I like to use at least 5) backwards around the layout. Running it faster than slower, this way, you will find out where there may be problem areas, and you can get those fixed before adding track ballast and landscaping.

Topography

You'll begin with the land, and the variations in elevation. If you are working on 2" extruded foam, it's pretty easy to build up layers for hills and mountains, and carve into it for depressions and water.

Of course there are other ways to create landscape, including plaster on chicken wire over a frame, or cardboard strips. You probably have some of this built if you are using higher elevations of track.

Filling In the Big Picture

After the layout's topography has been set, start to fill in more details - like roads, bridges, curb cuts, sidewalks. This really depends on your layout. Set your buildings and other scenes in place as you go, and of course see what it looks like with the train running through it. This way you can see in your mind's eye the final product, and make any necessary adjustments as you go. Even if you are starting with a drawn plan, you'll be making adjustments as you go!

Materials For Scenery

Three basic elements to pay attention to are color, shapes and textures. This is where "art" can come into play. Keep these in mind as you begin to visualize, and then realize, your layout's scenery.

Modern materials available for scenery, especially coloring, are all water soluble and easy to work with. You can find them at hobby shops, craft stores, art supply stores, and others.

You can find lots of good raw materials by taking a walk in a park or woods, where you will find stones, twigs and other "stuff" that can be used to add a unique look and feel to your layout.

For your colors, I recommend using acrylic paint, "school grade." Acrylics are water soluble, and easily available at art supply and craft stores. You can use white acrylic gesso for water details and to seal your foam constructions.

Texture

The textures of your layout can really bring it to life. An unkempt lawn, an abandoned city lot strewn with trash and more can be created or bought. Get several shades of scenery textures, including foams and ballast gravel, coal and dirt.

You can find on a walk wood, sticks, roots and more. You will slowly build up a collection of found materials, just keep them in a well marked place so your spouse doesn't "clean them up."

Realistic Water

Wait to build your water features until everything else is done. You can prepare it by painting and detailing the bottom, then wait. By waiting until the very end, including ballasting the track, you will keep the water from getting contaminated by all the other construction materials.

Ballasting Track

Your rails and ties sit on "ballast." Ballasting your track authentically can turn your layout into something truly amazing. Make sure you test your track and fix any rough spots. You can purchase gages to help you set the track (and the wheels on your locomotives and rolling stock).

Real tracks are steel, and steel rusts. You'll want to create the illusion of rust on your tracks too, and prior to adding the ballast. Using a wash of paint (that is paint thinned out to be translucent), begin the weathering process. Wipe the rail tops as you go. Repeat the wash until you get the effect you want. Burnt umber is a good color to use. And keep the paint out of your switches and any moving parts of trackwork.

After track weathering you can add your ballast. The ballast should blend in with the surrounding scenery from the right-of-way in a natural way. I recommend using real stone for ballast (you can purchase it at the hobby store). You can test any store bought ballast for this by dropping some in water. If the test ballast sinks to the bottom, it's real stone. If it floats, it's not stone, and it won't look right or stay put.

Select the stone size one size smaller than your scale - if you are modeling in HO, use N scale ballast.

Carefully lay the ballast in between the tracks, and allow it to "flow" along the right-of-way into the scenery. Make sure it gets down between the ties, not on them. Keep it out of the moving parts of turnouts.

Once your ballast is the way you want it use white glue thinned out with water and a little bit of dish washing solution (a few drops). The dish washing solution acts as a wetting agent, so the glue solution flows down into the ballast.

Give the ballast an authentic look with a wash of the paint you used to "weather" the tracks.

I've given just a hint of what you can do to detail your layout. I hope this gives you some ideas. Pick one small scene on your layout, and get started. You'll be glad you did. Have fun!

 

About the Author

Scott Watkins is a model train enthusiast, committed to helping others get started in this exciting hobby. He offers a free mini-course on getting started at his website, Model-Train-Info.com. You can find more articles about model train scenery, and building benchwork at his website too.

 

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