Superior & Seattle Railroad Build

[S&S RR]

John , did you get real Super Trees, i mean the brand or did you look for a Floral supplier. I bought a box from a floral supplier , cost me 45 dollars and it's good for about 800- 900 trees.

Hi Janbouli


Good to hear from you - yes I'm using the brand name SuperTrees that I purchase from Scenic Express.  The retail price here in the states is $115.  We made 650 full size trees with lots of branches for bushes and sagebrush trees left over from the first case. I have never found another source for them here and it probably doubles the price to ship them over that pond we have between us.

[bparrish]

John...

Have you considered making a less involved tree for the back ground areas?  Although looking at your photos the visitors can be close up most every where. 

What I'm suggesting in crowded forests on hill sides ............ near the top of the scenicing.......... only the tree tops can be seen .................. the forest through the trees gig.............

Let the plaster work stack up and apply only tops as it goes higher and farther back.  That begs painting your upper plaster work a dark shadowed forest color to make it believable when viewed from below.  This makes your visitors during construction very confused for a time but it does work.

Also consider structures in the distant background to be in N scale ( if you are in HO) as a forced perspective for the illusion of distance.

Making trees are a lot of fun but you're gonna need a bunch here.  Just trying to lighten the load a bit.

see ya
Bob

[S&S RR]

Thanks for the input and following the thread Bob.

I will be using forced perspective with the trees by changing the size as they get farther away from the viewer.  The steep elevation change on the layout requires that most of the trees be foreground quality to look right. Another forced perspective is that the narrow gauge line is at the highest elevation and in the background in the deep scenes.  I have designed the layout so there are four different mountain ranges in some of the views (not ready for a picture yet). I will also be using some N scale structures.

[bparrish]

John...

Very cool.

Below is a photo of the high line in my logging district.  The spar pole is a direction change in the lines and there is a staging point at the base of that spar pole.  The line going back to the wall goes to an N scale donkey boiler winch and some N scale buildings.  I had too much fun with this part of the railroad.

see ya
Bob

[S&S RR]

I'm using the following process for the confier trees. I start with Cedar shingles that were left over from my 1:1 Gazebo build.
I split the cedar shingles into strips about 1/2 inch wide.Then I used my belt sander to rough out a round trunk. After the roughing process I take over with a rasp to cut the final shape and add the bark texture. The final step for the armatures is a nail in the end for planting and a bath in Alcohol & Ink. I used 4 tablespoons to the pint to get the dark bark color I was looking for.The branches of the trees are made from dried caspia purchased at Hobby Lobby. The caspia is painted with olive green camouflage paint and attached to the armatures by drilling small holes and gluing them in place.  If you are lucky enough to find some of the caspia that is brown save it for the dead branches.  The final step is the dark green ground foam. Here again, like with the Aspen trees, don't use very much ground foam. I plan on replacing some of the trees in the yard area of my layout because I used to much ground foam on my first trees.

[bparrish]

Just terrific ! ! !

see ya
Bob

[S&S RR]

A few trees placed on the layout while I was testing the look with different size trees.  And a picture of some Aspen trees ready for planting.

[S&S RR]

A few more planted trees.

[S&S RR]

John...

Very cool.

Below is a photo of the high line in my logging district.  The spar pole is a direction change in the lines and there is a staging point at the base of that spar pole.  The line going back to the wall goes to an N scale donkey boiler winch and some N scale buildings.  I had too much fun with this part of the railroad.

see ya
Bob

Very nice Bob.  We need a picture from out in the room to give it the perspective view.

[S&S RR]

A few pictures of prototype trees in the Northwest area that I'm modeling.  The ones modeled by God!  Notice the size and shape differences as the altitude changes.

[bparrish]

John........

It's common in the northwest here that trees get the tops blown out of them by lightning.  The natural physiology of the trees, Doug Fir, Grand fir and occasionally Tamarack (Larch) is that when they loose the top they also loose the center of the tree growth hormone and the top remaining layer of branches go nuts trying to be in charge.  This becomes the nest foundation for prey birds, especially osprey if it is anywhere near water as they are exceptional fishers.  Put one somewhere and see if anyone notices.

see ya
Bob

[S&S RR]

John........

It's common in the northwest here that trees get the tops blown out of them by lightning.  The natural physiology of the trees, Doug Fir, Grand fir and occasionally Tamarack (Larch) is that when they loose the top they also loose the center of the tree growth hormone and the top remaining layer of branches go nuts trying to be in charge.  This becomes the nest foundation for prey birds, especially osprey if it is anywhere near water as they are exceptional fishers.  Put one somewhere and see if anyone notices.

see ya
Bob

I have the castings- I need to spend some time painting them. I have a number of detail mini scenes from nature planned.

[S&S RR]

I collected more talus material on my trip to Arizona this year - 2 five gallon buckets are currently coming special delivery via the Wayne & Elinore trucking company.  Wayne and his wife drove out to AZ and volunteered to bring the buckets full of talus back with them.  Arizona is a great place to get natural talus materials because every color possible seems to be within a few mile radius. I thought it might me useful to post a few pictures and describe the process I use to process the talus for the layout.

1) Step one is to get the use of the oven for a few hours (If anyone asks I use the one at the cabin).
I cook the material at 425 degrees to get the moisture out and get rid of any critters that may be hiding in the bucket.

2) After everything is dry and cooled down, I sift the materials into three different containers. The first is a mesh with 1/6 inches square openings. The second has a mess of 1/4 inch. Anything that is larger than the 1/4 inch goes in the third container. I try to collect materials of different shades of brown and gray and separate them into different containers so I can match the rock color in different locations on the layout. Here are a few pictures of the process.

[S&S RR]

In addition to the smaller talus that mother nature breaks up to the right size for me, I also collect some larger rocks that I breakup myself with a hammer. I made a special box that I store at the cabin for this purpose. It is made from some old 2x8 's and keeps the rock fragments from flying around when I hit them with a hammer. I have had real good luck making my own talus material this way when I can't find the right color and size. 

[bparrish]

John..........

Try this................ when you are done with a batch of plaster......... save the dried chunks that are in the bowl, on the masking and where ever.  I call them crunchies.  I break up the big stuff and save 'em in a box.  I really never seem to run out.  After the last pull of plaster over the sub base, while it is still wet, grab some crunchies and slide a fist full over the wet plaster on some vertical area.  When dry, blast it with some grey paint, seal it with dull cote and then use a india ink wash or something with a bit of blue in it to make it look like granite.  It's really easy and no one can figure out how you did it.

Rock strata can be done after the crunchies by pulling a coarse wire brush horizontally across the area.  One or two swipes and then allow to dry and color later.  Real easy.

I have seen a lot of railroads where people tried to use real granite but the quartz and hornblend crystals are so big it doesn't scale out.  If scaled to HO........... you can't see the crystals in granite.  Only the over color and weathering.

see ya
Bob