With my apologies to those of you who are allergy sufferers, weed season is here.
Mother Nature’s “store” is just full of wonderful dried plant material, which is just waiting to be picked and used as scenic material on our layouts. It is very realistic, and very inexpensive, the secret is to look for it.
I’m not very good at identifying plant species, but I do know yarrow when I see it. I just happen to have some in my foundation plantings around my home, and harvest a new crop each spring. In the past however, I have found it in large patches along the side of the road.
There are a lot of different plants that have been used by model railroaders over the years. A trip to your local meadow, or roadside ditch will turn up all kinds of interesting plants, and may even give you modeling ideas in the process.
Look at branch structures, and try to imagine what they might look like covered with ground foam or poly fiber or both. Some plants lend themselves better to different scales. Others can be combined on a larger trunk for a completely different effect.
Don’t limit yourself to thinking only of trees, sumac and other brushy growth can be found along side the railroad’s right of way.
This is a great way to get outside, and still work on your railroad!!![swg]
Late fall and early spring are esp. good times. The same blossom in June will look different in July & Aug, sometimes changing in just a matter of days; so keep looking as it’s a dynamic period in weedom.
I’ve suffered thorns, ticks and no-see-ums to get my prized weeds so I prefer the cooler months when things go dormant.
I’ve used spray glue to seal in the color and dry my weeds upside down. Some I sprinkle with colored sawdust and others look fine as is.
Some stems look appropriate as trunks and others you can thicken with putty. Also, paint as needed.
The pursuit of weeds is fun for me but for sissies who are afraid of snakebites and evil critters that may bite, sting, and attack you in various and sundry other ways, there’s always the off-the-shelf stuff you can purchase.
This is what I’m talkin about. If you want a laugh, I posted the same topic over on MR, and have gotten rather different results so far, check it out.[swg]
Elliot, its called old age. Never had problems until after 50. For those who have bad allergies, might try modeling the arid SW. Not as much “ground cover” required and there is something af a great beauty in that part of the country.
I said YOU DA MAN Dave. I saw that, I was talking about picking the weeds, not starting a brush fire with em.[bow][(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D][swg]
Jon, we don’t want fresh ones, we want to pick last years dried ones.
By the way, It takes a lot more than 4" of snow to close the schools here. 8" or more usually does it for us, and every morning that it snows, my kids pray for school to be closed. This year they got their wish ONCE![swg]
Speaking of green stuff - what do you use for grass - I have 20 ft of unappetizing blue and pink foam board I am loath to try to paint - try fabric? fake fur? Any suggestions?
All the closings were up in the Adirondak and Green Mountains. They got well over a foot. The real problem is, up there they don’t have paved roads, and the school buses bog down in the slushy mud.
I miss civilization sometimes…
Jon [8D]
By the way, I have three intrepid daughters who comb the fields and woods nearby for anything that might be mistaken for a tree. They’re really quite handy!
Check out the Scenic Express catalog! There’s all kinds of wonderful things to create grass in there. I’ve also had luck using an old wisk broom to create cat-tails for along the water-front. Cut them to length, dip in a little white glue, then brown ground foam and you’ve got yourself a cat-tail!
My suggestion for grass. First, you need dirt for the grass to grow on. A common mistake is just putting down the grass; but real grass often has patches of dirt showing thru. You can simulate dirt by using brown latex paint, then sprinkle green sawdust on top of that. Use very very fine sawdust. Mix water and food coloring or green paint. Let dry or put in oven. I make batches of different shades of green, brown, and yellow.
I actually add a step to the above process. On top of the wet latex, I sprinkle dried clay. The dried clay granules are perfect O scale size for real dirt since they are so tiny. Then, I sprinkle the colored sawdust on top of the clay and seal it with spray glue (I use 1:4 wood glue: water mix. Be sure to immediate wash out the spray bottle. I waited 20 min once and it was ruined because the glue jams up the spray nozzle mechanism.
For taller grass, I go outside and collect fuzzy weeds that grow in cornfields and some other fields. I forgot the name of it. I simply poke this weed thru the grass/clay and into the styrofoam below. There are numerous ways to make bushes. One technique I use is to collect wild lichen and glue it to the ground, then spray with glue spray and douse with thick layer of greenish sawdust.
Experiment w/different weeds to see how it looks; that’s my best advice. Trial and error. You can always root up a tree or bush if it doesn’t look good or if you find something better later on.
You mention that you grow Yarrow in your yard. Did you plant it? Will it grow in Virginia. Is it an annual or perennial?
I’m also interested in planting caspia.
For those who do not wi***o go out into the wilderness, and for some of us adverturers as well, it would be interested to hear from those of you who plant and cultivate weed specifically for use on your train layouts.
Thanks for the insights, Dave. I’ve never painted foam board before. I got a big jug of browni***annish paint - - of course I’ve already got the track down - so I’ll take out sections at the time and try to paint it as you suggest - have to look for sawdust. Do you think I could use playsand - I’m unsure how to color it - now that I think about it - it’s probably grained too small. Jon, I’ve used Woodland Scenics products in the past - but on a much smaller n scale layout - I was thinking the Scenic express stuff might be too expensive for me, but I’ll check it out too.
Dave, it is a perennial, but I don’t think it’s called yarrow when you plant it. I wish I could remember the name of the plant, it comes in a lot of varieties. I think that yarrow is what we call the dried flower.
Doug, there are lots of diferent kinds of sand, not just play sand, like you would find on the beach or in a sand box. Look for silica sand, like is used in sandblasting or astrays in fancy hotels. It is white and comes in different sizes, almost down to powder.
Your reference to ashtrays reminds me of something. Some places use a black sort of sand in ashtrays. If you are looking for black ballast or asphalt material for a road, then use some of this. I can’t recall where it’s sold.
Perhaps you can wait until the cleaning lady comes and then finagle the sand from her, sans the butts.
Dave, the local place where I buy Hydrocal, also sells a bunch of other things. It’s just a little hole in the wall and mostly sells to businesses. They are my supplier of choice for casting resins, rubber molding compounds, other gypsum products, and abrasives. One day when I went there I was looking around, and noticed crushed walnut shells. They almost looked like they would make a good ballast.
One of the train clubs I used to belong to, had a member that worked for 3M. Of course St Paul is 3M’s world headquarters, so around here 3M employees are a dime a dozen. But this guy had access to “roofing granules” . It seems that 3M makes them and sells them to shingle manufacturers.
They come in a wide variety of colors, and we could have had green ballast if we had wanted to. Of course we chose gray and black. Whenever we were running low, we would just mention it to this guy, and the following week there was another 5 gallon bucket full.[swg]
Around here we know that it’s bad when the metro area schools close, which isn’t very often. The rural districts close more often, also because of the roads. They also have the added problem of drifting snow from all of the wind blowing across the flat ground and farm fields.
Sounds like you have your daughters well “TRAINED”. [swg]
I think I’m going to change the name of this topic to FREE TREES, and see if it gets any better response.[;)]
I used to live in the Southern Adirandacks where the FJ&G used to be and a foot of snow was nothing.
Elliot,
I’m still in the layout building stage but down the road or tracks, I’ll pick your brain on resin casting. I have a number of trucks awaiting some scratchbuilt rolling stock. Also in the near future, I need to replicate a bridge. Resin casting sounds like a pretty cool hobby within a hobby.
I guess that’s why, folks, model trains are so much fun for me; there are so many hobbies within hobbies, from tree making and mirror cutting to painting and electrical, the list is endless. I don’t see how anyone can ever get bored.
BTW, Jon, some of my fondest train watching memories were in Vermont, circa 1970-72, around Burlington, over to Steam Town and all of the little cheese towns in between. I still have a small collection of photos of those colorful trains.
and a foot of snow was nothing.