One for the Road, Two for the Trees

Although I was happy enough with the roadway on 'odsock Corner I felt that it fell short of representing the rough surface of a obscure countryside trackway. The area that I was happiest with was the second crossing where I had a good basis for the areas worn away by traffic and time. I was convinced that I could get a better texture and colour...

Another mix of paint, PVA, tile grout powder and fine ballast was created, this time with more brown paint to warm the shade. This was laid over the original surface but not consistently, creating variation in tone and level. Whilst the mix was wet yet more fine ballast was sieved over and tamped into place to create further texture. 

I then let it dry overnight before the temptation to tinker set in. The following day further sanding of the surface took place, then some cunning setting of the resultant debris using matt medium. Another overnight to dry and weathering powders were used to add further colour variation to the various areas to represent those places where the dampness always seems to linger longer.

With plenty of mixture left over and knowing it would not keep, the area in front of the office building and around to the disconnected siding were treated, in front of the office I added both ballast and ground foam to the wet mixture to represent a rudimentary gravel path in the earth. As with the surplus of the first road surface mix, I also took the opportunity to coat the areas of ground formed from paper laid over polystyrene. Once everything was dry the grunged-up area of track had some shading added using weathering powders.

I do like the way the siding squeezes between the office and the tree... talking of trees, you may spot in the photos above that something curious might be going on... I had established early in the design process that I would use a Hornby Skale Scenics tree that I re-foliaged a couple of years ago, but I had a feeling that I may need a little more. Back in May I purchased some fir trees by 'Model Scene' (not the Peco brand) from CM3 Models with no real purpose in mind (other than joking about turning this layout into another Christmas scene!) but with the scenery now well under way I decided to try one in the gap next to the other tree. 

It has no trunk to speak of below the branches so is actually floating in fresh air at the moment. The flash of red through the leaves is a clip holding another idea in place. This twig was pruned from a bush in the garden last year along with a couple of others with their use as tree armatures in mind. A tree in this location was indicated on the mock-up but it is close to the edge of the board so will require some care and thought to create something that will not clash with the covering box.

Of course all of these trees are actually under-scale but at least they have enough height to not look too wrong in proportion to the small space of the layout. With plenty of smaller shrubs and bushes around I think the overall result will be effective.

Colin