What are some suggestions for making the flat areas of a layout look more realistic? Laying ground cover scenery straight onto a dead flat base board looks far too smooth. It seems to me there should be some gentle “roughening up” of the ground areas - some wrinkles and gentle contours, even just a few millimetres high.
Sculptamold works great for this… It’s a fine plaster-like material that has the property of the more you work it the smoother the surface becomes. When it dries it’s rock hard but has a pretty long working life and it sticks to just about anything.
Jeff
It’s easiest to do this if you use a foam base. Then you just dig out your ditches and gullies. You can also get some 1/4 inch foam and cover it with you plaster soaked towels or whatever to add gentle rises in the terrain.
Screen wire covered in those same towels work good too for raising the ground level.
As for going down with a plywood base, get the saw out.
You could mix sand or fine gravel with plaster or putty if you like working with those products and can get them relatively cheaply. You could even sift dirt and mix it in with those products. I would guess that even sawdust could do well, provided it was new and not subjected to heavy moisture.
Foam would be the best, but if you’re stuck with a plywood base (eg: if the track is already down, and there’s no heading back!) I’d go with non-shrink spackle. It’s cheaper and more readily available than Sculptamold, and will do what you need it to do (rough up the flatness and add microterrain)
Gypsolite has a naturally gritty texture. You can mix it up fairly thin, adding some brown acrylic paint for earth-tone, and then skim-coat it on the surface. After it dries, I blotch-paint it with greens and earth tones and add some ground foam and grass.
Do remember that if you choose to use real dirt of any kind, which you can do, drag a good magnet through it a few times first. Your loco’s will thank you.
If you used foam, it’s easy to dig some out, or build it up.
If you used plywood or something similar, you could build up some gentle contures with cardboard, and smooth them out with spackle or Sculptamold.
Nick
- We ARE Penn State! -
We are using (patching plaster) in a pre mix stage. Also have used THIN SET premix for the rocky look. You can PRECOLOR the patching plaster with any water based tube of color that way when it chips it will not be WHITE.
Jusy my $.02
Take Care
George P.
“testing trackwork”
I have mixed some sawdust with premixed drywall compound and some latex paint for just that issue. If I want something more dramatic carving some scraps of foam also works.
You can use crumpled up news paper, crumpled in to ball like shapes. Tape the shapes down onto the flat surface. The cover with the premade plaster strips. This makes very nice rolling hills if done right.
Steve
To model gullies, ravines, etc. and you’ve used foam as a base, it’s simple to carve it out. To make rises, bluffs, etc., I use chunks of foam, then cover them with plaster cloth. I just glue some large pieces and shape them with a wire brush, then cover with plaster cloth. Don’t make them too regular, very little in nature is.