Evolution of a River
I have been working recently on the "Oneapee River" crossing on my Diamond River Valley Railroad. Please enjoy the pictures. while I am only using a simple point and shoot for these pictures I hope to be able to take some nicer shots once the scenery is more or less complete.
The first shot is that of the blue foam being roughed in.
Once happy with this rough foam shape the next step was to use a liberal amount of mastic to bond the sections to the river bed.
With all the landscape roughed in the next step was to seal the boarder of the blue foam and the river bed with a foam spackling product. It is important to get a good seal when planning to use Envirotec product as this product will find any hole and leak thru until it cures.
The foam can be seen in the picture above. It is a brilliant white and stands out really well against the now green foam.
Jumping ahead a little here the river bed has been painted black, and the bank has received its treatment also. The bank was first painted a sandy gold color then thanks to my wife who just return from the beach, real beach sand was poured into the riverbed and once dried cleaned out to leave the finished product. this is a very nice back as the natural sparkle of the sand shows thru the paint in many places.
Abutments and piers were scratchbuilt for the bridge which is a combination of the Walthers single track truss and one micro engineering. 50' on either side. below the right side of the bridge will be a marsh/swampy area of the river with lillypads and cattails.
A four track crossing was fabricated to allow the maintenance personnel access to their tool shed. this will also be an access point to the overflow in the center of the pond.
jumping ahead again, trees have started to grow on the far bank and a first coat of ground foam and scrub is in
And all of a sudden a rock outcropping appeared. the far bank looked way to plain so with the assistance of some woodland scenic molds I added in the rocks. Some of the trees against the backdrop here are 85' tall. the pines and all "bottle brush" trees made from jute and floral wire. The other trees here are Scenic Express.
Well the bridge is temporarily back in and I am going to stop for right now. I will update this as more is done.
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Great job. Tell us more
Great job. Tell us more about your evergreen forest
Aran Sendan
Excellent update, love the progress...
Cadmaster,
You have a real knack there for scenery. Excellent update and how too on the progress to date. So did you make the pine trees yourself?
I will be watching your progress on the bridge with must interest, as I'll be doing something very similar on the JL&T.
Keep up the fantastic work, and keep posting updates and photos...
Jas...
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Web Blog: http://jlandtrailroad.blogspot.com/ Facebook: JL&T RAILROAD Complete MRH Blog: JL&T Railroad - Complete Blog Index…Pine Trees
In reply to both postings, yes these trees I made myself with the exception of one pack of Woodland Scenic pines. After I got them at a really reduced price they look too much like Christmas trees so they will end up getting buried at the back.
The trees are fairly simple to build.
First you will need floral wire. I get the pre-cut 18" lengths I believe they are #18 gage wire. I bend the wire in half and clamp the two ends into a vise. Next you will need some Jute or sisal. Jute is available in rolls the product is wound like rope so you will need to unwind the material until you are down to the thinnest strands. Once at this point soak the material in HOT water to relax it. After about 20 minutes in HOT water take the strands and hang them from a clothes line. I fashioned a line in my basement, and at one point I am sure my wife thought she had made a serious life mistake. Anyway, give the material plenty of time to dry and them it is on to the next step.
Some folks here prefer to add some glue to the floral wire, I just lay 3" pieces of the jute in between the two halves of the floral wire. Once the floral wire is loaded up with jute take your handy drill with a cup hook inserted in the sharp end and hook onto the floral wire and spin away. You have to judge for yourself how tight you want it to be, but too tight and the wire will snap.
well once you have done about a lot of these trees I take some scissors and cut the spun jute into a tree shape.
Next paint the whole tree in blacks, browns and grays. After the paint dries I then spray the tree liberally with cheap hairspray and flock it with ground foam material. Spray at the end also with ground foam to lock everything on the branches and you should have yourself a decent looking tree.
sorry that I don't have any pictures of the process here, but these were made quite a while back.
Neil.
Diamond River Valley Railway Company
www.dixierail.com
I've used this method with
I've used this method with mixed results. Though I like the ones you made here. I like to mix that method along with furnace filter trees and a handful of hard to make capsia trees to model a mixed speices Conifer forest.
Of the 3 methods, the Furnace filter is for sure the fastest.