Having mostly finished up the section of White Haven between the backdrop and the tracks, it was time to tackle the back corner of my layout, which actually captures some scenery south of White Haven where Mud Run flows into the Lehigh and the track eventually runs into the north end of the Rockport tunnel. This was always going to be a pretty boring section of the layout since the ceiling is low and it covers up the transition down to the storage level of the layout. I did decide last year that I would incorporate Mud Run into the middle of the turn - there's a really cool arched stone bridge there in the turn.
...and here it is from a bird's eye view from the west... The bridge itself looks to be about 50-60 feet wide, and I found a section of track that should work and I'll have to cut into the plywood supporting that section of track. It also looks to be about 30 feet high. You'll also note that Mud Run makes a pretty hard turn to the left as it goes upstream. That will work well for what I'm thinking of doing with the scenery behind the bridge.
Mud Run was the scene of a rather nasty accident between two LVRR passenger trains in 1888. 64 people were killed when a stopped train was run into from behind from another. Three passenger cars were forced one inside the other with a steam locomotive pushing that third car. Not nice stuff. There's a link on my links page for those of you who want to learn more about the wreck.
Anyway, I thought adding the bridge and the entrance of Mud Run into the Lehigh was worth doing in the area I have available which is a big sweeping curve (like the real deal).
I also need to nail down the location of the north end of the Rockport tunnel. The south end was fairly simple, since I just needed to center the tunnel over the single track. On the south end I'm going to do a little bit of disguise. There are two tracks that diverge just inside the tunnel. One runs down to the storage level of the layout and I want to hide that track from view. The other track runs upward toward White Haven and that's the one that will go over the Mud Run bridge. The problem is the tunnel portal has to have enough room to allow the upward track to carry through the tunnel with things like trailers on flat cars, but it also can't impeded cars running down and making the curve near the tunnel - finding the right spot to mount the tunnel portal is going to be a bit tricky and will require me running a bunch of trains through that section of the layout. The first thing I discovered is that the tunnel portal is just too low, the curved section of the portal was brushing up against the trailers on flat cars. I added an inch to the height of the portal by adding some more Styrofoam.
So here's a photo of the proposed portal location. The track through the portal will be the one you see, the track behind the portal will be hidden with a little scenic magic. Originally the tunnel supported the two-track main through the entirety of the tunnel - that's why it's so wide. Obviously, one of the first tasks is to paint the lower portion of the portal - not too much pink stone in the area, and I've learned my lesson - I will not be spray-painting. Spray paint and Styrofoam NO GOOD!
Here's the painted portal with just a base of gray paint. Once I found a location for the portal that didn't knock over TOFC trailers on either track I put a glob of foam glue on the base of the portal and glued it to the Styrofoam base in that section of the layout.
While I was waiting for spackle to dry and foam glue to dry last night I decided to install a plywood base for the Mud Run bridge. Ideally this base will give me a nice level surface to build up to the track level above it (which is not level).
I'll start building Styrofoam sheets that fit the profile of the bridge and its abutments (which are certainly not the same on each side. Then I'll add the arched portion of the bridge itself. I did find a nice detail picture of the current bridge that was helpful...
... so I used this picture to estimate some sizes of wall components and started cutting Styrofoam board...
I'll cut a similar arch for the back side of the bridge and cut some 45-degree flange abutments tomorrow. I'll also cut out a piece of cardstock to serve as the concrete ceiling of the bridge and glue everything together before I start making the individual stonework on the faces of the bridge and its abutments. Here's a rough picture with most of the components.
Then came the time-consuming part. Etching individual stonework into the Styrofoam panels using a ballpoint pen, painting them with white acrylic paint and painting individual stones. Here's a shot of the arched panel with the stone etching and painted white.
Painting individual stones was done by picking a color and painting stones randomly. I then picked a different color (started with say a brick red, then a brown, then two different light browns and a gray).
...and here's the same panel with all of the colors represented.
...which looks too fake, so I brushed some gray and black PanPastel powders on it....
...so I repeated the process for all of the bridge components. Then it was time for assembly.
Before I glued everything, I decided to see how things look. Not bad! The picture is shown without the paper arch roof that I'll place between the two arched sections. I used some leftover concrete abutment sections from a Clever kit for that and folded and cut it to size and shape.
Below is the concrete abutment printed out and started to be folded into the shape of the archway.
Here's the back side - I cut the folded end and glued it to the Styrofoam using Tacky Glue, and held it down with a roll of pennies.
...and here's the front section glued in place. I still need to secure the bottom of the arch and get the back wall secured. Starting to look a lot like the prototype - and that's the whole goal.
... and here it is more or less complete. I pinned the rear arched wall so I can remove the whole bridge if I need to.
With the tunnel portal and the Mud Run bridge in place, it's now time to add the base for the scenery. For this portion of the layout I'm going to duplicate the Sculptamold over plaster cloth over cardboard matrix that Dave Frary is a big fan of. For those of you who aren't familiar with Dave's "How to Build Realistic Model Railroad Scenery", I would suggest reading that one from cover to cover (or at least all of the pictures and captions). Below is a shot of the area I am completing. You can see that the Mud Run bridge is right in the center and the tunnel portal is on the right-hand side. On the left is the north end of White Haven.
For most of the area, I'll be gluing the ends of the cardboard verticals between the plywood supporting the track and the backdrop. To establish the cardboard matrix for Rockport mountain, however, I needed to build some supports to allow me to glue cardboard strips for the frame of the mountain. A piece of Masonite and a piece of quarter-inch plywood were cut to size and installed.
I then needed a bunch of cardboard strips. A razor knife made quick work of a box from a window unit. One problem though (and Dave addresses that in his book) - the cardboard is usually too stiff and doesn't bend freely. One way to fix is to run the cardboard through your thumb and forefinger and bend it around your thumb as you pull the end of the strip with your other hand (this is a good project while you're watching a football game). After working the strips, they bend to any shape.
I use hot glue and clamps or a stapler to secure the strips and join the verticals to the horizontals, and I am constantly evaluating the shape of my hills, snipping and changing features as I go along - that's the nice thing about the cardboard frame, it should always be viewed as a work in progress and something that can be easily changed.
I started working from the area closest to the north end of White Have and worked through Mud Run to the Rockport tunnel. I don't have a whole lot of room to add these hills, so they end up being quite vertical. However, that is the nature of the entire Lehigh Valley Gorge, so it works very well!
One note about the tunnel portal itself - it's made of Styrofoam. Styrofoam glue is messy and takes a while to set up, but I've found that using "Aleene's Tacky Glue" you can glue cardstock to the foam without too much drying time. Since I'll be attaching my cardboard strips to the edges of the portal, I built gluing surfaces on the back side of the portal. The photo below shows the gluing surface install on the top of the portal and secured with pins while the glue dries. I did the same for the two sides of the portal.
I've been making a little bit of headway every night on the cardboard strips to support the scenery - to date I've made it all the way around to the tunnel portal.
Before I work on the mountain that the tunnel punches through, I need to address the inside of the tunnel just inside the portal.
You can see from the picture above, that the two tracks diverge inside the tunnel and only one comes out. I want to hide the track that disappears and I want to give the impression that it's not a giant cavern behind the portal. However, I want to have access to the switch and the inside of the tunnel. What I decided to do was create the same cardboard framework inside the tunnel (this time half a cylinder to mimic the tunnel entrance, but I'm going to support a piece of aluminum foil in most of the tunnel that I'll spray paint black to simulate blackened stone walls. I'll also have a removable section that I can access from the backside of the duckunder. I know, a lot of words, but hopefully, as I build it, the pictures will be worth a thousand words.
I'll spare some of those thousand words. The cardboard strip structure was too cumbersome to attempt to work between the two tracks. I then started to think about forming a tunnel out of fiber board or a thin piece of sign material. Spent 3 or 4 hours before abandoning that thought with a bunch of cutting, sizing and in the end - complete frustration. Trying to get the bends to exactly mimic the curve of the tunnel portal was quite problematic considering that the portal is at an angle with respect to the track and the wall between the two tracks would have to get pulled ever inward as you went back through the tunnel. So, a new tactic. What I'm thinking of doing now is exactly what I did with the portal for the Mud Run bridge - but instead of gluing card stock to the shape of the tunnel I'll be gluing cardstock that's stuck to painted aluminum foil. I don't know if that will work any better, but there is one nice thing about foil - it can be pushed around quite a bit to get a shape that works. The picture below shows the start of that effort. Once I get the foil attached to the tunnel portal I plan on working on something on the "wall end" of the tunnel and then I plan on draping some removable aluminum foil over the complete structure. Pictures to follow!
Here's the northern tunnel entrance after positioning of the aluminum foil. As you can see, there is no more direct view of the track that takes trains down to the storage yard. I haven't run any trains to evaluate interferences, but I should be able to accomplish that this weekend.
I also decided to evaluate if I needed to complete the full black tunnel between the two portals. I believe that if I finish the mountain around the portal there won't be a whole lot of direct light getting into the central portion of the tunnel. We will see about that.
In the meantime during halftime of the OSU/PSU Basketball game I got the plaster cloth out and started covering over the cardboard mesh going toward Mud Run. I don't have enough of that stuff to finish laying over the cardboard, but Christmas is coming! A little bit at a time and before you know it, a big job gets done.
... and here we are a few days later having worked my way to the bridge.
I found some more plaster cloth, but before I laid that on I finished the cardboard matrix around the north end of the tunnel.
The picture above shows how I used the paper "tabs" on the tunnel portal to attach the cardboard strips - that worked very well! The tunnel portal isn't going to move at all and I can add the scenery around it easily.
And here we are with a little more progress made toward covering the cardboard mesh. Once I get the tunnel portal section done it will be time to make Sculptamold and cover all of the plaster cloth. Brown paint will follow that followed by a variety of trees, stone, rocks and ground covers - even some simulated water for Mud Run.
I ran out of Sculptamold, but not until I'd gotten to the tunnel portal. Cheapest I could find for a 3 pound bag was around $8, but there is one supplier who will sell you 25 pounds for around $50 with free delivery. Even if the stuff goes bad you're ahead in the end so I made the plunge and bought the 25 pounds. I'm sure I could sell off individual 3 lb bags if I wanted, but I'm probably going to need a fair amount over the next few years finishing this layout. Here's a picture with Sculptamold over the plaster cloth up to the tunnel portal.
...and here's the portal where I had to stop.
Stopping isn't real popular when it's chilly outside and I'm home for Christmas. It's December 26th and I started thinking what would be the best use of my time this afternoon with an order of Sculptamold on the way. Since I had been working a lot lately with Styrofoam structures (bridge supports for I-80, the Mud Run bridge, the tunnel portal), I decided to commence working on the major bridge abutments for the White Haven railroad bridge south of town. I'd already shaped, painted and weathered the middle abutments to hold up the center sections of that bridge (however, I don't like them, and eventually they will be replaced), but had put off installing the end abutment that hold up the ends of the bridge. To work on it, I had to remove the bridge sections and the middle supports. That means I won't be running trains for a while which will force me to get this project done relatively quickly. The photo below is from a few years ago, but shows one end of the bridge supported by a chunk of 2x4 screwed into the support for the plywood. Not prototypical... You can also see the middle supports.
I had also created the idea for the shape and size of the end supports using pink styrofoam and had cut them out a number of years ago. There's a center rectangular section flanked by two triangular portions that integrate into the existing terrain, and my original intent was to angle them back from the center section. Great concept, but that really doesn't work with the previously established terrain. In the photo below you can see the three sections lying flat.
I did a lot of experimenting, modifying the cardboard and plaster cloth structure near the location of the end supports, especially on the interior side of the layout and ended up angling those sections of the bridge support outward. It looks pretty funky, but I think with a little work I can get something that looks right.
Once I get these painted, detailed and installed, it's just going to make sense that I attack the scenery in back and then through the river that will run through here. Do it once and do it smart (that's my hope at least).
Started as I now normally do with styrofoam - put a good coat of spackle on the surfaces that I was going to paint. Styrofoam is so porous that if you just try to paint the pink your paint will just get sucked into the foam and you're left with a lot of pink surfaces that you never seem to get painted. I use DryDex spackle for this. After drying I give it a light sanding.
Next I figured I would attack the center bridge supports. There were a couple of things I wasn't happy about with the first attempt. First, the top of the support was too small. In reality, these bridge supports were wide enough to support two parallel bridge sections. Second, after cutting them out, I hit them a number of times with black spray paint which isn't good for Styrofoam - I think the propellant reacts with it and it gets eaten and the joints aren't crisp. So, 2nd try should be better. I'm making them wider and not using spray paint at all.
Cut out a 4' x 5" slab of 2" green Styrofoam on my table saw. You have to be pretty careful cutting this stuff on a table saw because it binds pretty quickly. I then cut that slab at 8.5" tall and made two of those blocks. I then used a variety of hand saws to cut the angles - each support gets smaller in every direction as you go upward. Here's a shot below of one of the real supports:
As you can see, the blocks are fairly massive - I didn't get a measurement but each row of block must be between 18 and 24 inches high. The brick surface is also rough and weathered. Anyway, here's a rough cut of the Styrofoam block to rough shape - I then slathered on some spackle.
The support to the right is my first attempt. Again, not wide enough at the top, the brick layers aren't tall enough, and I'd created the bricks that actually looked pretty good before hitting the whole thing with black spray paint that ate into every indentation I'd made to create the brickwork. I can do better now. But that's the thing about Model Railroad scenery - you can always do a little better. Some stuff I created 3 or 4 years ago is now not my standard, and I can always go back and alter - as long as it's not a major operation. In that way, a layout is never really "done". I would like to get to the point where I can see major progress all the way around the layout - and I'm actually pretty close to being at that point. The last three years have been very steady on progress, and I think a lot of that has to do with keeping this website up to date and full of interesting items. You wouldn't think an additional burden like a website would do that, but it's exactly what's spurred me on to get a lot of this work done - I want to SHARE it!
Speaking of stuff that you want to redo, the lighting on this section of the layout is poor to say the least - there's a single can light right in the middle of the space that doesn't throw enough light on the layout. As a result, my pictures stink. I'm thinking about substituting a fixture for the can light but haven't run into the right one yet.
After several coats of spackle on the bridge abutments I decided to rough in the stone blockwork. 24 inches in HO scale is about 0.3 inches, so for ease of measuring I decided each course of block would be 1/4-inch high. I struck lines with a mechanical pencil.
The blocks in the photograph gave me the impression that they are about twice as wide as they are long, so I penciled in alternating blocks using vertical lines.
I then scored each line with a sharp nail.
I'll do the same to the adjoining winds of the abutments on each side and then paint everything.
...which would be fine if the blocks were white, but they certainly aren't. It's now time to age the stone, which if you look at the photograph above, the primary color of the stone is brown, but there are certainly some light browns, reds, grays, etc.. The gaps between the stones look to be a uniform black. So, let me take you through my method of making this abutment look believable. First, a uniform heavy coat of black and let it dry...
After letting that dry overnight, I then started with a dark Espresso brown, and dappled a bit of that on each and every block face with a "dry brush". To get a dry brush, dip your paintbrush in a little paint and then dab it on a piece of paper, a painter's blotter or even a paper towel until there's just a little bit of wet paint on the brush. The goal is not to completely cover the black and give the block some "grain"
I could have stopped there, but as I said, there are other colors in the stone on the prototype, so I dabbed in some random golden brown, brick red, suede and ivory in layers using the dry brush.
...until you get something that looks like this... Not sure this is going to be the end result, but it's at least close to a final product. On closeup maybe it looks like the light colors are a little too dominant, but from further away (the more common viewing perspective), it doesn't look bright at all. The picture below also just butts the pieces together, but I intend to glue these with foam glue to minimize the gaps between each piece. I'll also eventually add some weathering chalks and some moss on the north side of the abutments. All in all, a much better effort than the previous edition using black spray paint as a base. Now for the other end abutment and the two center free-standing bridge supports...
I've also finished putting in the last of the Sculptamold near the tunnel entrance and painting a base coat of dark brown.
I did this all with a big chip brush, so there are still some spots to do touchups. Following that it'll be time to add some rock walls where the hills are almost vertical.
And here's a bit of progress to date on the revised bridge abutments. The black one still needs the multicolor paint effects and there's one more bridge span to be installed, but we're getting somewhere. Once I get the abutments and bridge supports finalized in terms of position I'll start laying out the river through this section of the gorge and I'll finalize the gorge profile around the bridge, install cardboard mesh and continue to attack the scenery here.
Here's a shot of everything painted. I'm going to permanently install the end abutments and get started on the river scenery, but the middle supports and the bridge itself are going to be removed to allow for scenery access. I'm going to try to work fast, because I won't be able to run any trains while the bridge is out. I may decide to weather and dull up everything. All-in-all I'd have to say these are an improvement over the past supports.
But, I'm itching to run trains and with the bridge out of service and scenery that needs to get done before I put the bridge back into service, I need to get cracking on the Lehigh river that runs through these bridge supports. First I laid out the route of the river with a Sharpie and then placed the bridge supports and marked where they would eventually be permanently mounted (the picture below). I then created the basic terrain from the tracks forward to the edge of the layout and started gluing carboard strips to support the plaster cloth and Sculptamold - same old stuff...
Back to Mud Run! After running trains over the railroad bridge I didn't feel like dismantling the bridge again, so back to scenic treatments for the Mud Run section. The portions nearest track level are nearly vertical, so I thought I'd do them all in rock treatments. The base treatment is a smattering of different greys, some blacks, and some brick red. I also treated the backside of the bridge. Took a couple of hours of patient application. Pictures below:
I'll hit all of these areas with some touchups and color emphasis soon. After that I'll do my puffball treatment on the upper regions of these mountains before doing the detail work.
One of the things I wanted to incorporate in this section of the layout was better lighting. All I had here previously was a single can light. Replaced a couple of fans upstairs and had some leftover directional lighting from those fans, so I fitted the fixture into a piece of plywood and ran a couple screws into the ceiling supports. Wah la! Also bought an adapter that fits into the can light and has a set of wires that I spliced into the fan's light fixture.
Detail work! The first thing I want to be able to do is add "Realistic Water" to Mud Run (which runs right through the bridge from the back side and spills into the Lehigh River in front of the bridge. As you can see in the photo above, it would spill right over the edge and onto the floor! I need to develop a space to put the river in front of the bridge and moving around in parallel with the track. I did some cutting, notching and fitting of 1/4" plywood. Photos follow:
I cut the inside edge - it's not meant to be the inside edge of the river in the turn, it's somewhere in the middle of the river.
So, I needed to install a dam all the way around the curve to hold the Realistic Water in place.
That process started by installing some nailing blocks below the plywood and securing them with glue.
I then nailed some PVC molding strips to the edge using an air nailer securing the molding to the nailing blocks. I also painted the molding a dark brown.
Cut some cardboard strips to develop the terrain and hot glued them together.
Here's the first half of the curve. The water will be poured onto the plaster cloth and Sculptamold I'll attach to the plywood.
and here's the second half. Plaster cloth tomorrow!
Cut out about 1 and a half packages of plaster cloth and laid it in less than an hour tonight. Sculptamold laying starts tomorrow.
Here's the drying paint on the Sculptamold. Next the addition of plaster rocks secured with a bit of Sculptamold or glue.
And then we paint....
and paint....
and paint for the water of the river and Mud Run...
and here we are ready to pour...
...and it was time to pour. First, I took some precautions and installed a drop cloth underneath the layout to catch drips....
...then I poured from the back side of the bridge and gravity pulled the Realistic Water through the bridge.
After I was satisfied with the depth and coverage of the water, I added some Woodland Scenics Water Effects. In the photo below the Water Effects are still drying - should dry clear. I'll then hit the clear ripples with some white paint once everything's dry.
While that stuff was setting up and drying, I started putting trees on the upper reaches of the hills. Polyfil puff balls, lichen, moss, sythetic foam clusters, etc.
If you look above the last locomotive in the picture, you'll see that I made some attempts to put in some pasture/hayfields up there. Got a little bored just putting in trees.
I was continuing progress clockwise around the Mud Run curve. Went to bed one night and started thinking about the area behind the bridge. In real life, there's a bunch of light behind the bridge that highlights those areas. With the single light I'm using to light this area, the area behind the bridge is in shadow. I decided to play around with some incandescent bulbs I picked up a few years ago. My original intent for the bulbs were as replacements for locomotive headlights. I thought they were LEDs and were smaller. Got the bag in the mail and said "Hmmph. These won't work." They were too big and incandescent, which if I would have read about the item are right in the description.
Just for kicks, I attached the ends to my track bus bars and it lit up very well. Got a little too hot and was probably too bright for what I want, but it was an encouraging start. I put some extensions on the wires and routed the bulb behind my bridge through the scenery.
Added a few more trees to the upper reaches and then realized I was out of one of my favorite moss colors (a bright green) as well as lacking some puff balls of polyfill. Until I restock, I'm going to wait on adding more trees. Decided to put a mix of brown ground cover on the areas between my new trees and the rock walls surrounding the tracks.
More progress - here's a distant shot of the whole Mud Run area. You may notice that I've put some "brown stuff" on the brown painted areas above the track that haven't been taken up by trees.
I will next try to super-detail the rock walls behind the track. Right now they're a little on the uninspiring side of dull. I'll recoat with a layer of Sculptamold and lay on some crinkly aluminum foil to give some texture. After it dries, more paint.
Took a little break to wait for paint to dry and painted my tractors I received just before Christmas from Outland Models. They came with a small bag of simulated hay or straw, so I put it in furrows up on one of my farm fields at the top of the hills along with the N-scale tractors. Why put N-scale stuff on an HO layout? I wanted to give the illusion of distance. Just having the tractors up there in a different scale tricks your mind into thinking they're much further away.
After adding a few paint details on the rock walls around Mud Run, it was time to add some detail trees above those rock walls. The pyramidal hydrangeas were sliced, diced and peppered with SuperLeaf scale leaves and then inserted into holes in the scenic base. Pictures below:
I added some trees and detail work behind the bridge and added more trees between the bridge and the previously detailed areas.
I decided the rock walls on the outside of the curve needed some flora. On the north face, I decided to apply moss, and on the southside, some small shrubs and weeds.
The moss was a bit tricky, but inspired by walking in Rocks State Park where there's a lot of it growing on the many rocks and boulders on the north side of the property. The stuff has depth and a ton of color - from deep greens to very light green and almost a white. I first tried adding the moss to the rocks using just a paintbrush and a wide variety of greens:
I thought it looked good, but I also thought it lacked some depth. Got out my variety of mosses and made a hodge podge of colors and varieties by cutting them.
It looked great in the tray, but the scale was wrong when I tried to apply it as moss - the stuff was too big. Spent about 20 minutes shearing this stuff into really tiny green pieces and then applied them:
That answered the mail on the north side, but I then got stuck on the south side. I started sporadically placing small shrubs and trees, but it looked like small shrubs and trees sporadically placed by a human - not natural enough.
Dejected, I looked for inspiration from pictures on the web and found this one that was taken in the gorge near the old, abandoned railroad tunnel:
I noticed that a lot of the vegetation was clumpy and had a wide variety of colors. Where had I seen something like that before? (Hint,what's in that white tray above?)
Finally dawned on my that I could collect and snip up moss and apply it in bunches to areas on the south face:
I may add some things to the south face, but then again, I might not. Until I make that decision, I elected to paint the rails and ties of the track in Mud Run since I need to ballast that track very soon:
You can see in the photo above that the factory fresh track is in the foreground, while the painted (rusty) track moves off inthe the distance. I also painted the ties a variety of browns to simulate recently replaced ties (black) to old ones (lighter brown). After painting track and ties, I decided it would have been much more efficient and easier if I would have at least put the first coat on before laying the track.
Then the fun of ballasting started. I like the look of ballasted track, but getting it to look right and be functional (not derailing your rolling stock) can be a challenge. First key I've found is to put a nice bead of full-strength glue on each edge of the cork roadbed and then apply ballast liberally into the glue using a spoon. After it dries, vacuum the extra up and save what you vacuumed up and reuse it. I like to start with the area between the rails, work it as far down the rails as possible and keeping as much of the ballast off the tops of the ties and out of the rail flanges. Then I work the outside the rails on each side, and if there's extra, let it dribble over the edge of the roadbed. I then apply Isopropyl alcohol to the edges of the ties and between the rails and let it soak through the ballast to act as a wicking agent. I then apply a 25% glue/75% water with a little bit of dish detergent to the wet ballast and let it dry.
After several fits and starts with ballast (about a week of my life I won't be getting back), it was back to foreground scenery. Dug into the bin of "brown stuff" and glued on a significant amount to the foreground areas between the track and the river.
Then today I added more cut up moss and foliage clumps to simulate underbrush.
...and here's the wide angle look at the Mud Run Curve. It's really starting to come together, and is probably better than I expected it to look like.
I decided I wanted to try to model Mountain Laurel and put it on the slope between the river and the track. Mountain laurel is gnarly, multi-stemmed with fairly sparse leaves right off of the stems. Decided to try to model it with the flower brachs of a gray dogwood and pushing the result right down to ground level.
The mountain laurel is tough to see in the photo above since the camera tends to flatten it out - it's between the rocks on the left and the rock in the middle.
Once I decided on the tree/shrub density that I wanted for the foreground, it was time to add trees and shrubs to the mix. Finished the side of the curve between the bridge and White Haven. Photos follow:
...and here's more shots of the work on the south end of Mud Run.
Now that Mud Run is FINISHED (and I say that with a sigh of relief and accomplishment), it's time to move back to scenery under the railroad bridge above White Haven.
First thing to do around the railroad bridge was to remove the bridge and piers to allow access to the back portions of the gorge there. However, because I was going to pour water right up to the edge of the piers, I wanted a surrogate short pier to take the real pier's place. A chunk of Sytrofoam in the same basic profile as the real piers was substituted and screwed down through the plywood underneath.
I prepped the riverbed (very same process used for Mud Run) and I've been adding layers of Realistic Water from the lowest section to the highest. I made sure to install a tarp underneath the scenery in case I had a leak.
Pouring the layers was slow work. I had a low section in the back that was a good deal lower than the area where the bridge piers are, and it took a good 8 pours to fill that up. Here it is close to finished.
I probably have a pour or two left before attacking the back portions with scenery. Puff ball trees first as usual.
...and now it's time to reinstall the bridge piers and the bridge. I'm going to hold off on finishing the areas in front of the bridge.
I didn't like the gaps between the sections of the abutments, so I got the spackle out and filled those gaps, and then I had to re-etch the individual block segments with a ballpoint pen.
Got the paintbrushes out and touched up the filled areas. Then I decided to add moss - first by paint only, then by adding some very small bits of
Thought this might be a good time to add some fishermen to the scene - these are Woodland Scenics "Fly Fishermen".
I then weathered the piers and abutments to simulate some dirt, grime and oil.
...painted the rails and ties on the bridge surface...
....weathered the bridge sections with PanPastels....
...and reinstalled Humpty Dumpty....
...and that brings an end to this very long blog entry. I wanted to do two things when I set out - finish Mud Run, scenic the area behind the White Haven railroad bridge, and add the rivers at each of the locations. Mission accomplished! On to other things, but first, a shot of the concrete local - first unit over the newly renovated bridge.
