Can not find back what I look for on the DVD of 75 years of MR

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I was astonished what I was forgotten what I once read in MR when I have installed the complete DVD on my computer.

I have almost every copy of MR(with the exeption of 2 or 3 copies) between January 1980 and now.

Between 1976 and 1980 my father bought some single copies for me.

It was also fun to read the very first copy of January 1934 and see the hobby elvolving through the years and also elvolving the style of MR. I think that it was a time-consuming task/painstaking task for someone or a group to scan the copies, from before the digital era, page by page( or how they did it otherwise?).

But I was looking for 2 articles and I can not find them back(I know I have readed it in MR) an I used the search engine and put a lot of different names and words in the search engine but in vain.

The first article is about the huge layout that was located on one of the islands of the Netherland Antilles(I think it was there), I do not remember it was located on Aruba, Bonaire or Curacao.

And the second article, I think it was plublished between 1989 and somewhere the end 1998( I was doing then nightshifts in a telephone information center, but it could also being from before that time frame because I rereaded sometimes older copies) and it was about self making ground cover/flock from the grass out of your garden, I rember that you haved to use an old blender and that you should put the mixture on an also old baking plate and put it in the oven to dry the mixture.

Can someone give me th

2

I actually remember an article about this in an RMC issue in the 1992-1994 range.

The owner was a high level diplomat from the UK that had retired to the Caribbean. I remember it quite vividly because it seemed so out there.

3

I could not find an article either, but I believe that the technique you are refering to is reprinted in the book “Basic Scenery for Model Railroaders” by Lou Sassi. It involves taking dead leaves, pulverizing them in a blender, and then drying the resulting product in an oven to produce a convincing ground cover for wooded areas.

4

Are you thinking perhaps of the Great Northern layout on Curacao?

The original article, “Great Northern Railway in the West Indies”, was in the October 1977 issue of Model Railroader. Mike Nixon was the layout’s owner.

There was a “look back” piece on it (“Along the Line looks back: The Great Northern in Curacao”) in the July, 1999 issue.

There was a Mike Nixon who built a CSX layout that was covered in the November 1995 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman (“Michael Nixon’s CSX-Eastern States Division”). I don’t recall whether that layout was on Curacao.

5

Yes, thank you it was te Great Northern layout on Curacao. I will look up the copy(that is one of the single copies that I have from the time frame before my subscription)

6

I think to remember it was not the use of “Dead leaves” but green grass and weeds(maybe I am wrong), the left overs after you have mowed your garden, than blended in a blender so that it was not a" puree" but something that you could “scatter”.

7

I remember various mentions of using dead leaves and fine twigs and other such natural materials - and also the baking of dirt and other things to make sure you kill off any unwanted guests, of which a given scoop of natural outdoor dirt is going to be FULL of.

I do not remember seeing any articles about using something like fresh cut grass - I can;t imagine such a thing working anyway, you try to blend a fresh undried pile of grass clippings and there’s so much moisture in there it will turn to slurry very quickly. And any drying process will make it brown, either before or after blending or chopping it up in a coffee grinder or food processor.

There have also been many articles on using various DRIED weeds as tree armatures, as well. Again, anything live and green will not stay that way for very long after it gets clipped off.

–Randy