My new railroad is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of south western Virginia. I have completed the backdrop construction, valance and about 1/2 of the backdrop paintings.
Soon I will be building the Benchwork and installing track/electrical. I’ll need a lot of trees and thought I would begin building some.
Trees (Decidous and Evergreen) around here are commonly 30 - 40 ft. Tall. When placed next to a locomotive or rolling stock they overpower the scene.
It Seems to me that prototypical Trees, in the foreground close to the rails will be too large.
How do you determine the size of your foreground trees?
As big as trains look to a human standing close, nature is that much bigger. If you are running older stuff, not modern AC4400’s and double stacks, you can get away with smaller trees than strictly prototypical that will still be taller than the locos and cars, as they should be, but not as much. Where the real trees are 30-40 feet tall, a real double stack train will still be under them, so trees towing over the equipment isn’t a bad thing.
Usually, we have too many trains and not enough scenery. Apart from a yard or a complex junction, there just aren’t a lot of tracks in any one area. Even large model railroads tend to have a trains to scenery ratio that leans too far toward trains. That’s the appeal of N scale for some, even when they have space for a good size HO layout - they don’t build more track, they just fill in the area freed up by the smaller trains with more scenery.
but i’m told trees in the background and presumably not next to tracks should be smaller to give the impression of distances. (Should structures not next to tracks also be scaled down a bit as well)?
on the pragmatic side, tall trees in the foreground both block the view and access.
I recall another thread on this very topic from about a decade ago and the conclusion was that scale height trees often just look “wrong.” Most trees on layouts I visit are closer to the height you’d see in an apple orchard, not a forest. A 40’ high hardwood tree is not all that tall in real life yet seems to dominate the scene on a model. An 80 or 85 foot tree which I think is pretty common - so the same length as a full sized passenger car – is rarely encountered on a layout. And a large clump of truly large trees – even more rare on layouts, yet commonplace trackside.
Oddly enough even in N I mostly see undersized trees, and some O scale layouts seem to use the same size trees as HO layouts.
For what it is worth here are some average tree heights, from the always reliable internet:
We talk about selective compression of structures (not just shorter or narrower, but often built to a smaller overall scale such as 1/8" = 1’ for HO), and it is common for utility poles to be placed closer together on layouts than in reality. (We won’t even mention how close our block signals and towns and depots are to each other!). But I’d wager that the most severely compressed parts of our layouts, other than our absurdly sharp curves and tight turnouts, are tree height and street and sidewalk width. Guys who would not dream of running an Athearn “shorty” passenger car or RDC are willing to compromise in those areas. Perhaps out of necessity - a full width city street and full length city block is almost shocking to see when you encounter one done to scale, and some logging dioramas feature scale height trees and again it is disorienting - what scale is this?
Thanks for the replies and kind words. I keep looking at prototype steam era photos and the trees next to tracks do indeed tower over the trains. I need to find a compromise that will include tall trees without obstructing the scenes.
The scale down as the railroad and scenery move away needs to also be carefully considered since too much of a reduction in size will not look right.
in my NJ layout I had about 8ft. from front to back and it was easier to reduce trees and buildings toward the back. In fact there were several N Scale items toward the back. This layout is a walk around and no part is more than 3ft. Deep so a little tougher to create the perspective.
Im going to have to try different configurations to get a reasonable result.
Very interesting to see that models trees really should dominate the scenery! Definately contrary to what us modelers do.
If you suppose an average tree is ~87 ft, as previously stated, they you do have some handy measuring tools: a 87 foot flat or auto rack for more modern eras, and two 40 footers for older eras!
Now that is alot bigger than most trees modelers use, so think how AWESOME it would look if we had trains running through full height trees. Scenery would dominate the scene, and I would suspect create a very realistic effect!
I agree with what you wrote. Currently putting trees on my layout and have 8-10" in the background while smaller ones are in the foreground. Creating depth is far more difficult than many suspect.
To the OP: Pls ping me with a PM b/c I also model Southern VA, but in the 1980s. Roll N&W! Great stuff.
Just like with building, if you go scale size things may not fit well on an HO layout. Probably most models of buildings are selectively compressed. Likewise, trees may fit that practice to. Yes, since HO is 1/87 real size, a real 87’ tall tree would be 1 foot in HO, or 12 inches tall. Of course tree’s vary in size from small to super tall, so try to use some common sense when adding tries.
In my case of doing desert scenes, many tree’s in desert environs are not real big, many scrub tree’s so I probably won’t plan on many large tree’s.
One thing to note is that trees and foliage encroaching on right of ways or parking lots are going to show signs of uncareful maintenance. When the forest gets too close to traffic, out come the big trucks with the big shears that turn those nicely shaped round trees into a D shape, flat side towards the humans. Then growth fills in, then more shearing. Over time, in a forested setting, the foliage looks more like a wall of leaves than trees.
Oot west, things can be more sparse, but east of the Mississippi the trees and shrubs tend to grow everywhere that isn’t routinely maintained by man, which include property lines in the city and farms.
Sometimes, the only foliage around is right along the edge of the ROW, because the land just next to it is being used for some purpose.
Edit: Mike’s pic shows this very well, how the foliage fills in the seam of unused land along the ROW.
I don’t know if any of that has to do with height. Just a ramble.
I’m not sure I agree. I want to see trains, not trees. Using trees that are actually sized to scale messes up the compression that we are forced to use. If we want to convey distance I think it would be better done with more trees that are smaller rather than a few trees that are larger.
This is an interesting and timely topic for me. I just ordered a bunch of different trees for the club to see how they look. I thing the largest are only 4" or so.
Gary,On some of my past end of the branch line switching layouts I used smaller “new growth” trees around 1 1/2- 3" tall in the foreground. These new growth tress was part of a beaufication project after a off the layout new highway project cleared a lot of the old growth trees.
In your case these new growth trees could be replacement trees from the logging of the old growth trees or a new highway project…
I think some selective compression may be in order with trees…
BUT, here in the mid atlantic 50’ to 80’ oaks, pines, ashes, maples, poplars, etc are pretty typical.
Trees much taller than 80’, or maybe 100’, are not typical at all. 87’ is surely not an average around here.
Ornamental trees planted and groomed by humans seldom exceed 50’.
So there is a difference between modeling a natural forest and modeling the tree in the yard of a house in a neighborhood.
Power lines, not counting long distance very high voltage transmission lines, are typically on poles between 20’ and 30’ high.
So I think most of the commerically made poles are “close enough”.
Tress twice that tall would be “average”, and give a good appearance.
Our 1901 house is 55’ tall, it once had lots of mature, 80-90 year old Norway Maples in the yard. as they failed we had to remove them. The tallest was about 110’ tall and 4’-5- diameter trunk. The rest were only about 60’ to 70’ tall with 3’ diameter trunks.
So HO trees 6" to 12" would be a realistic range for your biggest “old growth” trees.
I have always used trees in the 5 - 7 inch range for foreground scenes. They just look nice to me.
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For these trees I use an armature made from 4/0 battery cable dipped in super glue. Then I model bark using caulk. Foliage from Super-Trees finish the models nicely.
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I don’t have any pictures, I have only made five or six of these, and I have none made for the new layout.
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These look right to my eye, even though in reality they are only 35-50 feet tall.
Thanks for the ideas and perspectives. Seems I need a few “scale” trees in the 8 - 10" range but others will be made to fit the scene to make sure I can see the trains. In other cases like where there is a tunnel I’m thinking trees could be used to HIDE trains if thats desired.
Agreed. If a person is modeling a rural area that is ungroomed by humans, nearly all of the trees will be of that height, and, they tend to be shaped like broccoli, tall stems with the leaves only at the canopy.
Overcrowding of forests never allow trees to reach their natural shape, which is the round form we typically see in yards and parks when they are left to grow unimpeded by competing trees.
So in the midatlantic and SE USA, IMO, the canopy of a forested area should actually be between 8 and 12 inches tall, with only a few trunks visible and smaller new growth trees along the front edge. A more manicured area would look differently, with the tall trees only along the untouched property lines, IMO.
And a person could get fancy and model a section that the railroad recently cut back. A bunch of bare trunks and half-trees near the ROW where the shearing exposed the openness of the previously shaded ground.
Kevin, I think you are right on target. This morning on the way to the job, I paid closer attention and confirmed what I posted above.
As I said above, in most places I have been here in the east, 80’ to maybe 120’ is the typical max for natural forests. Sure there will be the occasional extra tall ones, but typically the whole forest seems to have a canopy topping out at 100’.
But I also saw both forested areas, and individual trees in the open, where most where only in the 50’ range and smaller. And most man planted ornamental trees I noted are easily under 50’.
We have one tall tree left on our 1901 property, an old growth pine that is no more than 75’ tall. Behind our property the neighbors have two near our property line that might reach 85’.
I trimmed my side of them years ago with bucket lift that reached 75’.
Most of the surrounding trees don’t appear much taller. There is one a few houses up that might be over 100’.
