I’d appreciate your recommendations for purchasing N Scale trees. I’ll need hundreds of them.
I am in HO, but have just made a hillside of Scenic Express Super trees. This is an amazingly realistic product. I notice that they have an N scale starter set on their web site which may be a good starting point. I have also been using the poly fiber ball technique for background trees. This is a really quick and inexpensive way of filling in a hillside.
Supertrees by Scenic Express.
http://www.scenicexpress.com/supertrees.html
I purchased one bag of their tree material and have already made over 400 N-scale tress of all sizes. Here’s some pics from my layout (of the larger ones):
I agree, Super Trees are currently the best of the kit trees on the market. The only trees that are better are those that are scratchbuilt out of a number of materials, as described over several issues of N Scale Magazine recently (those trees take over an hour apiece to build, and aren’t really suitable for large layouts).
Keep in mind that trees as models really are multi-scale. Also keep in mind that the Super Trees kits are made of natural materials. As such, they’re fragile, break easily, and might attract mold and hungry critters. If you want more durable and mouse-resistant trees, you might want to opt for the plastic-trunk trees made by both Woodland Scenics and Scenic Express (which are nicer than WS, but are only available direct).
Accurate Dimensionals have always been the best trees I’ve got on my layout.
They’re expensive in the ready-made form, but the kits are more economical
and if you have the patience, they’re quite realistic.
What is the “poly fiber ball technique”? Please be specific with material brand names and colors.
“What is the “poly fiber ball technique”? Please be specific with material brand names and colors.”
Hi Thom, I follow the method described in Dave Frary’s video series www.mrscenery.com Basically, you take woodlands scenic polyfiber, pull it apart and hand roll it into small walnut sized balls. Soak the balls in 1:4 ratio dilute mat media or white glue, squeeze out the excess and then put them in a bag of ground foam. Mix well and you end up with ground foam covered balls. I used about 6 different colors of ground foam to get different colored balls. After they have dried, I used white glue to place them on my background hill sides. As I get close to the fron of the layout, I put first very small super trees getting progresively larger ad I get nearer the front. This helps with perspective. I am quite happy with the results and did not use nearly as many supertrees on the hill as I imagined.
I would venture to guess the foam covered poly balls would look fine wedged between full trees to create a more dense forest?
Correct, you get a good representation of a heavily wooded hillside. I have put some woodland scenic pine trees in amongst the balls as well as some bits of twig and bare super trees to give the effect of lightening struck trees in the forest.