Made a decision back in May to try to make a major leap forward toward getting more scenery completed on the model S&NY. Knowing that scenery creation requires 50 square feet of mess, whether one is doing 1 square foot or 30 square feet of scenery, I figured I may as well take a big bite of it.

Also, each section I wanted to complete contained at least one bridge for a total of 3. Lifting even one bridge would take the railroad out of commission for op sessions, and doing things all at once would minimize the disruption.

That was the plan, anyway…

Bridges out:

Next, lots of cardboard webbing. A hot glue gun, clothes pins, and a heavy rubber glove help things go relatively quickly. I spent just as much time cogitating on how the landforms should look as actually gluing cardboard:

In the center of above photo, you can see I also fabricated a stream bottom and rough bank edges using foam and a hot-wire cutter. I felt this corner of the railroad would also need more lighting, especially once the trees were in place (I’ve found that dark green tree-covered hillsides tend to suck up a LOT of light), so I installed an additional 2-foot LED fixture back there.

Next came plaster bandages over the cardboard. The green foam is where rock castings will be affixed:

Then, I slopped flat black latex paint over the larger areas I knew would be covered with puffball trees:

The track in the above photo gets reeeeal close to the backdrop on the left, so I used rubber rocks from Cripplebush (http://cripplebush.net) hot-glued directly to the backdrop. Not sure I like the rectangular look of the rock wall, and I may peel it off and cut it to alter the shape a bit. I plan a farm scene with a typical Pennsylvania bank barn in the left foreground, and I made a foundation for the scene out of gatorboard which was hot-glued in place.

The black paint gives the mountainsides a “Mountains of Mordor” look, but that will be all covered up by trees. Eventually.

Also fabricated a new smooth stream base at this location from 0.060 styrene sheet, since the foam underneath was kind of chopped up. Trying to get the foam smooth with spackle was going to be a losing proposition.

Next is to start placing all the rock outcrops at the various cuts and other places.

Anyway, that where things stand now. I’m not using any amazing new or innovative techniques, and I may have bitten off just a bit more than I can chew with this much scenery at once, as it is certainly taking much longer to make progress than I anticipated. The scenes are also much, much deeper than I would ever build again; but hindsight is always 20/20, they say. The scenes should photograph well, once done, though.