About 500 8"-18" pine trees for less than $100..or FREE!!... heres how...

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Are you planning a large wooded area on your layout? Groaning at the cost of all those trees to fill the space? Thinking of how impossibly long its going to take you to make 500 Bottle brush trees? (that turn out looking right everytime, because mine never do). Dont really want to paint them o the backdrop to save money or buy an expensive backdrop???

I may have hit a solution, and I’m pretty darned sure of it… a couple of weeks ago the solution hit me… so I kept my eyes open, waiting to find the source I was looking for. Well folks the season is now officially upon us, Christmas is here!!! Yes I know its still August, but tell that to Hobby Lobby and the other stores who ALREADY have Christmas trees out on display!!! Have you guessed it yet?? Yep thats right Chrismas Trees!!! the biggest bottle brush tree of them all, comprising of many many smaller bottlebrush trees all huddled together.

Now true, some of the very cheap, tinsel type trees just will not do, however I saw some VERY realistic ones in Hobby Lobby today and inspected the individual branches for suitability, and several of the trees were a very suitable basis. Unfortunately these trees were runing at $250… although still not bad for over 500 trees, less than 50c each. Wall-mart and the like will be selling suitable trees for around or under $100.

Here is the scene I am trying to replicate…

Now , I’m guessing I would only need two rows of full height, fully foliaged trees (12"-16" high) but then after that all I would need are 2" trees on long trunks or elevated scenery to depict a dense forrest, showing just the canopy, this would be similar to the puffball method of making a hillside canopy of deciduos trees.

Now dont get me wrong there will be a little work involved… trimming the branches to ‘tree’ size, shaping the trees, maybe so

2

Interesting idea.

And a great site to duplicate. I know it as the Koksilah trestle, I belive the Kinsol name comes from the Trans-Canada Trail.

3

Love your trestle. Just starting mine, smaller than yours to go under the big bridge. Also, thanks for adding your trestle to the Huge bridge thread. As for the trees, I thought of that but have not yet tried it. I will wait for a pic or two.

4

It comes from the name of the copper mine for which it was built. It is a diminutive for “King Solomon Mine”…believe it or not. The mine went into production in the late 1890’s, and went broke about the time they had installed about 20% of the trestle. It languished until CNR bought the rights, but by then they had to demolish the aging timbers and start over. It will be rebuilt to scale, but not with the dimensional lumber or fastenings to support heavy rolling traffic since, as you say, it is intended to be made part of the TCT. I’m not holding my breath, BTW.

Sorry, Karl, I digress…I think you might be on to something. I am soon going to be populating vast expanses (in my 9X13’ space) with trees of all types. So far I have made one of Joe’s, but of course it looks nothing as good as his. [V]

How are you getting on, anyway? You sound like you are at a full head of steam.

-Crandell