Planting time. Day 25-ish

After two or three days of making various types of weeds, the time has come to plant them. As a result I also decided that it was time to commit and wrap the layout in its case. It might come apart to be painted but this is it. The layout is in its home. Besides, there will be no way to design, assemble and fit the fiddle yard until the case is done. So it was done. 

Layout enclosed, pelmet in place.
Eagle-eyed viewers will notice a premises sign being tested.

With that sorted out. I got all of my 44 weeds, some white glue and a broggler, (a pointed implement for poking holes in things) to plant them in the ground, and set to work. 

I had no idea if 44 would be enough, so I just poked and planted away. In the end I used 42. (Waits for someone to make a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy reference)…

I saved a couple of larger ones for later, just in case someone at a show wanted to know how they were made. I could make up a little “how I did it” display plinth.

Goldenrod and Yarrow in the scrub

Yarrow around the siding end

Cow Parsley grows around the fence

Perhaps still more are needed. But I want to add some more long grass, and I really would like to try to make some nettles. So there will be more undergrowth around and about yet. But when the overgrown track looks like this, things are certainly looking right.

Typical industrial permanent way.

The next project really must be to get the fiddle yard/sector plate fitted. I’ll save that for next week. 

The next big step.

We all progress in this hobby. As we spend more time working on our layouts, we develop. We learn skills.  We become better at them, Then we learn new skills. Things that we thought impossible become easy. The bar becomes raised. Sometimes without even noticing it.

Then one day you do notice it. All the little steps amount to one big step. You’re left wondering how did I get here? 

It was only a few years ago that I learned how to make my own panel track seen in this image. That too was a big step preceded by lots of little steps.

In this image there are many of the little steps since then, that lead to this next big step. 

A 16mm scale Peter Binnie skip. This is a new scale to me. I actually don’t make many kits, and those I have started usually end up unfinished. I have half a dozen Slaters O scale wagon kits in such a state. This is a simple kit, little more than 10 parts so it got finished.

It’s battered and rusty. I don’t weather. I don’t trust myself. I don’t want to ruin really nice trains with some hamfisted dirty streaks. I buy R-T-R trains with weathering on them. The rim of the skip is banged up. As I don’t weather, I never thought about this before. This simple trick was suggested to me by another 16mm scale modeller. It’s a simple fix but it makes the wagon look like it’s been in service a while.

Static Grass. I have never used static grass until recently. While you were all covering your layouts with grass fibers from expensive, or even home built applicators. I was still in the last century using scatter materials. I had convinced myself that these fibers of grass were round whereas a blade of grass had width so the two couldn’t look the same. To a certain extent I still subscribe to that point of view. But the way those long fibers grow around the timber baulk buffer stop looks very pleasing.  

The timber baulk is distressed, something else I hadn’t thought about until recently all you have to do is drag a razor saw blade down it. That’s not hard.

Weeds. The weeds are the last step. I have no idea why I thought modelling individual plants was something I could do. After all, I had seen Roy C Link’s nettles in his Crowsnest Tramway book, and thought to myself. Never.

It just seemed at that moment something I wanted/needed to try. I remembered that I had made many tiny trees for my Hitsu and Gonou T scale layouts. It couldn’t be any more difficult than that. I made about half a dozen, Then another dozen, followed by 20 more. Now I have about 40 weeds, a mix of Goldenrod, Ragwort and Cow Parsley to plant. It’s probably not enough. They are individually identifiable plants. A new skill has been learnt. A new step taken. Strangely, I find myself wanting to model nettles now.

I started to plant a few weeds on the layout. Ragwort at the sand pit end because they like sand. I pushed the skip up against the timber baulk. Just to see what it looked like.

That’s how I got here.

Looking at the scene, and the image, made me pause. I was gobsmacked. Without realizing it I had just raised my bar. All those small steps and decisions have pulled together to create a whole. The scene has a sense of place, an atmosphere. To a certain extent I feel like I’m there. To be honest, I want to go over there and tip that rusty old skip bucket over. 

So I did.

 

So here I am. In a new place. A new realization that I can do whatever I put my mind to. I’m still a long way off the abilities of the true artists of the model railway world. But in my own way I think I’m with them. In spirit at least.

iPhone plant lookup actually identified my work as a plant! Day 23

There is a feature on iPhones wherein you take a photo of a plant or an animal, and the phone will search its database and tell you what you have taken a picture of. So just for a laugh, I thought I’d see what it thought my creations were. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t expecting anything. So when I ran the picture though the camera and got an answer I was shocked.

It’s Yarrow!

I was aiming for Ragwort, but Yarrow is native to the UK too, so I’ll take that as a win. Next up I tried the one I was proudest of, the Cow Parsley.

Alyssum or Buckwheat

Sadly, it didn’t recognize it as Cow Parsley. But if I was modelling a garden setting in 16mm scale. Then Alyssum would be a plant to have in the flower beds. 

I tried my third different plant..

Goldenrod for the win!

I was amazed. Goldenrod is native to Minnesota and the UK, and it grows along the trail that I run daily. This plant was in my mind as I created these models. To have my miniature creation recognized for what it was intended to be was unreal. 

You can just call me the miniature gardener…
I’ve made about 20 weeds right now, hopefully that will be enough to make a mark on the layout.

Weeding - Day 22

Making them, not removing them that is. 

One of the great things about modelling in a large scale such as 16mm is that you can do much more than suggest plants you can actually model them, and depending on how skilled you are. With quite some accuracy. I wasn’t too bothered about recreating nettles in painstaking detail like Roy C.Link did on his Crowsnest Tramway layout. But I was keen to try to go a bit further than using commercial products. I wanted to make some of my own. 

Driving around with all the summer flowers, (and weeds) in bloom. It was clear that yellow would be THE colour to use. But how to make the plants?

The secret to the method lies in tree modelling in smaller scales. There are skilled folks out there who use stranded wire twisted and bent to all sorts of shapes to recreate stunningly accurate models of trees. This may go back to G. Iliffe Stokes in August 1958 Railway Modeller. But a much simpler method will suffice for plants like Cow Parsley and Ragwort for example.

Ragwort

Cow Parsley

One thing that is apparent about all these plants in the field is how straying the stalks are. It seemed quite natural to use straight wire to model straight stalks. Keeping the stalks straight during construction was nigh on impossible.

The wire 15 AWG multi stranded hobby wire

The wire was cut to a suitable length and cladding stripped off.  The individual strands of wire were then thinned down into smaller groups of between 4 to 8 strands. These were then twisted together to create the desired shapes, and a little solder was melted into the end of the stem. This I hope will make it easier to plant the stems into the baseboard,

Strands ready to be twisted together.

Twisted strands ready to receive solder

I was feeling pretty good about the way things were going. Nothing had been too difficult. Twisting the wire strands had been fiddly, then I remembered that I had made a bunch of  trees for my T scale layout Gonou, culminating in flowering cherry trees. Happy with the way the stalks were looking it was time to foliate them.

Step 1. A spray of a green paint to get rid of the copper wire colour

Step.2 A spray with Woodland Scenics scenic cement, and a sprinkle with fine foam

Final step. Dab the ends of the stalks with white glue and sprinkle yellow (for Ragwort) and white (for Wild Parsley) scatter on the ends.

I’ve only made a dozen so far. I just made a few to see how it went. To see if I enjoyed it enough to do a load more. I don’t know how many I’ll need. But these look the part, and when grouped together will probably look quite convincing.

Another new skill learnt.