Monday, January 29, 2018

Prefab scenery - 2

After my portable hill's paint had dried, grassy material was attached to the steep sides with it laid out flat and a box underneath to catch glue dribbles.

After that, it was stood up and grass added to the tops of the hill. As always I'm dribbling on isopropyl alcohol (the cleaning/medical kind, not the drinking kind) as the wetting agent and following up with diluted PVA white glue.

The hill was then laid down on its side again for some forestry work:

Trees and scrubby bushes were planted. In the above shot, the trees are being encouraged to set 'straight' with some props.

Ideally, I'd have liked more pines/spruces/whatever-they-are here, but elected to spend seven pines of my collection here, and filled in the rest of the space with various ground foam, fine leaf foliage and even old rubberised clusters collected over many years.

As I always say: variety in size, colour and texture really helps while scenicing.


The prominent bank of grass on the real thing is visible to the right here, and other misc items large and small have been planted along the track and in the boring bits to make things look interesting. The hill was propped up at 45 degrees to make this easier to see without bushes rolling down the slopes.

Again, it's all rather easy when you are focusing on a small section right in front of your face that can be flipped to any angle that suits you.

Then it was time to plug the hill into place for a look. Could be worse.




Prefab scenery is a winner, with being able to comfortably focus on a small section being only one of its advantages.

In hindsight, it would have been best to do all my 'prominent' scenery that's hard to get at in this way (if it wasn't needed to be in place as a structural/stiffening element as my bigger hills are) and it's going to be hard to go back to working on those big hills, the village, and the tight Meienreuss valley with its bridges.

If (when!) I ever have serious issues with my hidden trackage (spirals, or yard), it certainly would have been far easier to detach one of these lightly-glued-in prefab sections rather than hacking into the permanent scenery with a saw. Even small hatches that could be cut out...

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