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The railroad halves have been re-joined, now that this corner area I've been working on is finished (more about "finished" a little later in this post). Here's an overall shot of the area. Off to the left of the dirt road is the next area to get groundcover and scenery, and to the right is the un-plastered "other half" of the RR.
There are 48 evergreen trees, a mixture of fir, cedar, and spruce; 10 Aspens, and 2 cottonwoods (just a few trees are out of frame, if you're counting!). It's amazing how many trees are needed to fill an area convincingly. I could have easily included more, as you can see.
Planting the trees is pretty easy, they have a wire stem sticking out the bottom just for this. I drill a hole, vac up the dust, put some white glue on the stem and bottom of the trunk base, and inset it into the hole. You will see in later pictures, I add a wood filler material to create roots at the base, covering any part of the trunk base that doesn't lie flat on the terrain where the terrain is angled. This also helps hold the tree in place, like the glue. Getting the trees standing up perfectly straight takes some walking back and forth, looking at them from a distance at several angles. I use clamps and tape where necessary until the glue and wood filler are dry.
So, what does "finished" mean to me? It means I'm happy with the scenery and the overall look of things in an area. There are always things I could add - telegraph poles, structure lighting, more clutter and details. Always more clutter and details! I might go back and add things from time to time. But for now, I'm very content to move on.
Here are a few closeup shots of the area:
And a few more. This sprinkler wagon is heading up the hill to water the grassy grazing area outside the stock pens. I guess they didn't think about just piping water up the hill from the creek with a hand pump! (I did, but that wouldn't look as cool as the wagon).
The sheep herder and his dog are moving some of the sheep out of the way for the wagon to come in, while others that are ready to become mutton chops are being loaded into a waiting stock car.
Finally, here's a closeup of a heavily planted area behind the garage building. Lots of clutter here, including a fallen tree.
Moving on now to more scenery. Next time I'll try to detail some how-it's-done that I've missed.
