Rolling Hills

With a steady supply of dirt now in hand I decided to work on some more scenery. To get my feet wet, I first did the area between the tracks on the passing siding. I focused mostly on dirt and bushes and less on grass, though static grass and clumps will come in the future. 

Then, I turned my attention to the front edge of the layout. New England scenery is anything but flat and I wanted to add a few hills and dips to reflect this. So, I picked up a piece of 1" thick green extruded foam and broke out my hot wire tool that I got for Christmas. Finally, I could use it! 

I didn't have a lot of room and I didn't want to model the Alps so I just shaved small pieces here and there to look like rising mounds of earth. I am not sure what I was expecting but the process turned out to be a bit of a letdown. Even with the heat cranked to full it wasn't terribly quick, and the cutter blade just seemed to bog down here and there. And talk about spiderwebs after... something I never saw on the Youtube videos I watched. After some online research I think I might have had the temperature too hot, so I will experiment with that in the future.

In the past, I would just heavily layered on ground goop (sometimes up to a 1/2" thick) to make my terrain undulations. It took days to dry and would sometimes crack during the process but it worked well. This foam should work better but I have to experiment more. In the end, I got some pieces that were usable and I glued them down with caulk. 

One other note: it smells like burning plastic (because it is) and I had a fan constantly blowing on my workbench while I did it. The smell didn't bother me because it reminded me of the time my father took me to work with him at Kodak and we toured the plant where they melted the plastic pellets to make disposable cameras (remember those?). I fondly remember the trip and associate the smell of burning plastic with that... but it isn't for everyone!

The next day I mixed up a batch of Ground Goop and went over them to blend them in more. The recipe for Ground Goop is found here. This time, I used some advice I found online and mixed it up in half of a cheap basketball. The theory is that after it dries you can crack out the dry remainder and use the ball again for a bowl. That didn't work... but I only paid a dollar for the ball so no real loss.

If you make the goop too thick it is hard to spread, and if you make it too thin it runs everywhere. The magic sweet spot is hard to find, but this time I changed techniques and used a cheap chip paintbrush to spread it out. That allowed me to put it where I wanted it and maneuver it where it had to go. It worked great, much better than my gloved hands or metal spatula.

I went up and down the mounds, including a small one wedged between some tracks. I didn't carve out anything below track grade on this layout section but certainly will for others.

When I ran out of goop I just kept brushing the remains of the bowl onto the foam to give me a base color and adhesive layer.

Then, on went real dirt. I didn't use my superfine stuff but instead went with the next step courser, which included very tiny pebbles and lumps. For O scale, this looks pretty good (the fine stuff is best for N and HO scale).

Added next were three colors of "fine" Woodlands Scenics turf (bright green, dark green, green blend). 

Finally, I pulled out all the stops with course turf in various colors, different bushes from several manufacturers like Woodlands Scenics and Scenic Express, and other such stuff. The greenier... the better. I am modeling fall when scenery is lush again after summer droughts but some is just starting to turn brown and die off.

The full kitchen sink was used...

For variety, I also embedded some real rocks and pebbles that I had baked in the oven along with the dirt. I even included one rock from my previous D&H layout... just to keep that alive a bit.

A healthy dose of white glue and water was necessary to keep the larger bushes in place. Then I set up a fan to blow on the layout and went to bed. And thankfully, no leaks were underneath the layout the next morning when I checked. Yay!

I'm pretty happy with the results.

The front of the layout will look a bit untidy until I install the fascia boards, but that is a long time away.

This fall, I plan to process and grind up real leaves to use as ground cover (essentially for modeling fall in New England) and also add static grass. Until then, it looks more like spring on my layout. That's okay though. I think it's pretty.