I’m thinking of redoing my 4x8 027 layout with landscaping. Right now, it is laid out as my Dad did it 50 years ago - nice layout on bare plywood. I’d like to put some landscaping in and design a new layout that allows for expansion, perhaps another 4x8.
One of my old Lionel manuals talks about using felt to create mountains over tunnels, etc. Some people suggest painting the plywood green and painting roads over that. I’m leaning towards the felt, but could use more info or better ideas on how to go about it. Nothing spectacular, but a start, anyway. With felt, how do you create some relief, i.e. small hills, rises, etc?
Charlie
If LIFE gives you lemons, make lemonade and find someone to whom LIFE gave tequila. (Ron White)
The landscaping can go as elaborate or as simple as you ccould possibly imagine. Look through some of the previous Sunday Photo Fun posts and look at the layout pictures of folks who frequent the forum. My layout is plywood with static grass added while tan paint was wet. My portable layout has felt. My Test track has indoor aoutdoor carpet. The grass on paint looks best and is the most adaptable (fixable). The felt is a pain. The indoor outdoor carpet is the most durable and most play friendly.
There has been a lot of advances in landscaping technique and materials. First figure what your expectations are going to be, high rail with lots of realism, vintage toy look, or active play use with kids or ???. Then once you know what you want to do, do some research and ask questions as to which would be best for your application, and resources of time and money.
Howdy Scout [C):-)]. I agree with Mr. Phish concerning the different techniques. Need to ask yourself what “look” do you want for your layout. Perhaps a classic LIONEL catalog look from the 50’s or 60’s, or a more modern “Hi-Rail” look with all the scenic foam/flock material…
Once you pin down what you envision, we can help you further.
I’ve looked into static grass since Phish mentioned it. That might be too involved and fragile for my application: I hope my grandson will continue to be interested and he enjoys playing. For example, unloading the “trucks” off the flatbed with the crane car, building lego buildings (scale isn’t a concern for him right now) as well as running the trains.
My trains are PostWar freight trains. I’m hoping to redesign the layout to include two small towns with stations to load/unload, turn around, etc. I want to retain the ability to uncouple in two to four locations and shuffle cars around that way.
Also, some gentle relief would be nice to break the monotony of the plywood base. Just small rises, boulders, lakes, things like that.
So the layout needs to be kid friendly (he’s nine) with the ability to adapt as he grows - or for me if he loses interest.
Phish mentioned indoor/outdoor carpet. My wife also brought that up, but I thought it might be too thick. Maybe not. Have others used it and are happy with it?
Along with the previous good suggestions you might take a look at a few sites like Scenic Express and Woodland Scenics. Thay have a lot of materials and ideas. There is a vinyl mat available that already has grass glued down to it. This can be shaped into hills and a heat gun will help set it into place. The grass can be removed if you wanted to put in a road. It is a bit costly compared to painting plywood or some indoor-outdoor carpet which can also be used. I think quite a few folks have used carpeting…
Hi-Rail is generally a form of modelling that uses 3-rail trains in a scale or semi-scale setting.
Reading what you’re trying to achieve, I’d stay clear of fancy scenery stuff for now. Concentrate on a track plan, including where your switches/sidings/industries will go. Operating accessories tend to eat up a lot of real estate, but can be incorporated in a well sceniced area. Kooljock has an outstanding operating layout in a small room.
Wow, those photos look great. Are the lower photos static grass or painted gravel? Of course, they look more realistic since they are not monochromatic, but I don’t know if I have the patience for too much detail work.
Now that I’m retired, I should be able to slow down and take as long as needed to do some of these things.
Thanks to all who replied. You’ve given me some good ideas and product sites I knew nothing about.
As my dear old Dad used to say after he retired “I wake up with nothing to do and go to bed with it only half done.” Right - now I’m wondering how I ever had time to work!
These are some pics of a Halloween display layout that I built for my Girlfriend and her Kids. It was built on a hollow core door ( smaller than what You want though) with trim molding and screw on legs added. The grass is indoor outdoor carpet secured with double sided carpet tape. The roads were made out of some pallet liner that may be hard for some to find. The trees are Woodland Scenics (WS) the picket Fences are by Model Power. The sidewalks are wood stock similar to what yard sticks are made out of, using a razor saw to scribe shallow lines, would give the appearence of mold lines.
I laid the pallet liner on top of the grass then laid out the buildings and sidewalks where I wanted them, and cut through the liner and grass, then pulled up the grass from the cut areas and laid the road down. You could do similar by cutting the grass where you want sidewalks and roads, then after pulling up the grass paint the roads and glue down the sidewalks.
To build mountans and hills, one idea would be to use sheet foam board, like the 2" blue or pink insulation board. cut and glue layers in the basic shape that you want, then use a Shure form rasp to rough in the shape, then if needed sand ot finish shape. Paint as desired, or for more detail paint a flat brown and then use various WS turf glued to it.This would make your mountains/hills removeable for track maintainence, or to easily change things for variety. It also makes it easier in that you can build and detail it off layout, which would also avoid any mess on the layout. WS has an incredible array of scenery products such as turf, ballast, rock and foliage in a variety of sizes and colors.
For his age, I would suggest Plasticville buildings, such as the Station, church and single story house in my pics below, Plasticville has many more buildingsas well, and K Line by Lionel also mak
I would suggest the following for a quick and easy scenary treatment;
For grass areas, use Woodland Scenics ground foam, the kind that comes in a shaker bottle. Paint the surface a dark forrest green using a flat latex paint. While the paint is still dry, sprinkle on the Woodland Scenics ground foam and allow it to dry completely. Now go back and paint over what you just did and once again sprinkle on the Woodland Scenics ground foam. This gives a nice sort of two tone green affect that looks very natural. Be sure to use FLAT and not glossy paint.
For your track roadbed areas, use Woodland Scenics gray ballast. Brush on a 50/50 mix of Elmers white glue and water. Sprinkle on the ballast and allow to dry. You might want to go over this with Matte medium to make sure it all stays in place. Now re-attach the track.
Lay the track down on the platform and take a Sharpie marker and trace where the track is. When you take the track back off to do you scenery work, you will have the lines to go by to put your scenery products in the appropriate areas.
Next get some pre made trees and use a hot glue gun to attach these to the platform. Try to put them in groups of three or so.
The foregoing gives pretty good results and doesn’t take a whole lot of time.
I like what you have done with the Astro-Turf. It’s broken up with the roads, etc. so it doesn’t look as monochromatic as if it were all grass. Perhaps a mix of your strategy and what Overall talked about would be a good place to start.
For one thing, carpet remnants would be an inexpesive way to get some OJT and replace mistakes. Maybe the vinyl mats and such would mix in for relief areas.
My layouts tend to be pretty busy, as I like a lot of track, uncouplers, switches, etc. The Asto-Turf perhaps mixed with the more advanced methods should be a good mix for me to begin with.
The lower pics are the static flock applied to wet tan paint. The roadbed is a product called vinylbed out of Tn. I added extra ties using black foamboard cut to size then white glued in place.
When putting down the static grass, work about a 2’ x 2’ area and leave a wet edge “un-flocked”. It is really easy and you can easily go back and touch up areas. A little of the tan showing through looks more like a “real” yard, with bare patches.
For the birm of roads and dirt roads, I took white glue applied with a paint brush then sprinkeled fine sand in the glue. Let it dry a day or so then vacuum up what does not stick in the glue
