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Scenery from the ground up

Scenery is the backdrop for the drama of our model railroads. Creating scenery is not difficult but it does take some thought to get it to appear correct.

The most important aspect of scenery is that it existed before any railroads came along. It is advisable that you figure out what the scenery may look like, before you start building your layout.

Railroads were the first form of transport that really changed the landscape. Roads followed the sides of hills, climbed up and down valleys and generally worked with the scenery to get where they were going. Railroads on the other hand decided where they were going and changed the scenery as required. They bridged valleys, created embankments, blasted tunnels, and quite literally moved mountains. Evidence of these activities must show up as part of good scenery.

Knowing the location or setting for your railway obviously helps when thinking about scenery. Northern Ontario has different scenery than the Prairies, or the Rockies, or even Southwestern Ontario.

Now that you have some idea of what the typical scenery for the area should look like you can get more specific. Where would a river look right, what would be on its banks, does it go through town or out in the wilds. Were the towns built on the same level as the railway, on the hillside above, or on the flood plain of a river below a long trestle.

The easiest way to model this is to elevate all of your trackage an inch or two above your baseboard. It is easier to create culverts, bridges, and embankments, if you have pre-planned for scenery below track height. Woodland Scenics Sub Terrain system can help you here.

Be creative in your scenery plans. Include any aspect that you have liked from your travels. The hard part is getting them to look right together.

Building scenery is not as hard as some people think, you have to start from the ground up.

Underneath all scenery is the hard core – rock. This provides the support and general form to the scenery. The easiest way to construct hills and valleys is using layers of plaster cloth over crumpled up newspapers. Plaster cloth is a loose web cloth coated with dry hydrocal plaster. When you wet the plaster cloth it becomes very flexible and can be easily shaped to create complex shapes like eroded hillsides. When it dries the plaster cloth is very hard, and a good base for the rest of your scenery.

Where you want rock outcroppings to occur, rocks cast in rubber molds can be added. These can be cast from plaster and painted with washes of acrylic paints.

On top of rock you will find various layers, soil, grasses, weeds, shrubbery and trees.

For soil choose a latex paint that is close to the colour of the soil in the area you wish to model, this is usually a brown or tan colour. Paint this over your ‘hard core’ over small areas at a time. Use lots of paint and apply your first layer of texture before it dries.

Your first layer of texture can be real earth, dried and ground to a fine texture, or something representing ground cover. The latter can be obtained as grass, burnt grass, weeds, or dead leaves for a forest scene.

The next layers will represent taller weeds, undergrowth, and shrubbery. Each layer can be sprinkled on randomly providing a variety of appearances, or placed carefully in the case of a city. Each layer should be sealed to the last with an over spray of Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement.

Trees are the final layer for most of your scenery. These can be purchased finished, as kits, or as basic materials so you can make your own.

The only part of your scenery that differs from this is ballast on your trackage. For anchoring this we recommend using white glue mixed with an equal amount of water as the adhesive. If you decide to move your track at a later time a little bit of water will soften this up again so that it is easily removed.

A large variety of scenic products and details, along with books on how to use them, are available at The Credit Valley Railway Company.