the start of a river.

I have started to work on some scenery. On the inside of the U part of my layout I am going to have a river, well it is more of a river bank with just a little water here and there as it winds along the track.

This was easy for me to do because I have a layer of 1½ “ foam on top of my bench work so all I needed to do was cut the corner of the foam off making it easy to contour. After a layer of plaster cloth I applied a layer of plaster to make sure the foam would not come in contact with the woodlands realistic water causing it to bubble.

 After a coating of Woodland slate gray paint I started to apply talus rock in fine and medium gray. To do this on the slop I painted a layer of white glue to hole the talus rock in place. After the glue dried, over night I put a layer of white glue and water mixed over the talus rock to seal it.

I also started to weather and ballast a small section of track. I Started by air brushing everything with rail tie brown. Then I painted some odd ties with a lighter colour of brown to make them look older. After I had the track painted the way I wanted it I added the ballast and used a stiff paint brush to move it around so it looked just as I wanted it. With an eye dropper I put 70% alcohol in between the rails. Once the middle of the track was wet I added the same glue mix. When you add the glue mix in between the rails after the alcohol it flows easy. It also pushes the alcohol out the sides covering all the ballast. I find that if you use to much alcohol it just get pushed out the sides by the glue and makes the surrounding all wet.

After the ballast dried, over night again, I added some fine ground cover to make it look like dead and alive grass. I don’t know if I like the way it looks but we can always pick it off with a knife.