Getting ready for scenery on my new layout, please chime in with the pros and cons of lichen and ground foam scenery. I have both, just wondering on the use here and there…
I think bare lichen looks too bare and out of scale for HO. I cover it with ground foam for bushes and trees. Bigger clumps glued onto “tree trunks” and covered in fine ground foam make pretty good back ground trees.[2c]
One thing I don’t like about lichen is that it becomes extremely brittle and breaks up into a pile of dust at the slightest touch. One thing I’ve done in the past is to use filter fiber to make bushes and such and it looks as if I’ll start doing it again. The only reason I’ve been using lichen is because I could get it pre-colored but looking at the price I’ve been paying for it the filter fiber and green spray paint is a lot cheaper.
Years ago, when I used lichen, I gave them a bath in colored water with glycerin and some formaldehyde.
The last one I wouldn’t use today.
Wolfgang
In my opinion, lichen is too out of scale looking for N, which is what I model, and the foam holds up better in the long run in terms of color and condition.
I use a mix of lychen and ground foam to cover most of my 20x36 layout. I found that if you use it together it works fairly well.
I use both, it kind of works well in a mix here and their. It depends on what you want though. I like lichen for some scenes though, that my opinion though. I have some that is over 25 years old and is still like new.
I use faux fur with ground foam for bushes:
Shown with an HO horse and woman, and an OO man
Visit:
http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/scenery/green_bushes/
Thank you if you visit
Harold
One method or material does not preclude the use of the other. As others have stated, lychen and foam each have a purpose and a place when used properly. Foam is too flat and diffuse to make convincing foliage when it’s ground very fine, and it looks just like colored foam chunks when large enough to suggest anything larger than grass or moss. Lychen looks like chunks of rough moss colored with fabric dye when used by itself. Adding ground foam to lychen makes a convincing bush, and dicing up lychen to beef up the texture of a grassy field of ground foam works well.
Concentrate only on the pros of each material, forget about the negative aspects and the “vs” arguments. Use what you have, not what you don’t. You’re not working for Disney after all, it’s only a hobby so don’t sweat the small stuff. Very nice layouts have been built using dyed sawdust and chunks of plaster for scenery, it’s how you balance and blend that matters.
Lichen, when used by itself to represent some form of vegetation is very much an “old school” approach (typically 1950’s), having been superseded years ago by more modern and realistic looking products. The resemblance of lichen to living bushes and trees is extremely superficial, to say nothing of its tendency to eventually deteriorate. While there are still some modelers today who employ lichen on their layouts, as mentioned earlier it is usually done in conjunction with an application of ground foam to covering it.
Companies such as Scenic Express, Heki and others, nowadays offer a host of far superior ground cover materials for the same purposes modelers employed lichen for years ago. Even the use of properly prepared dead weeds to create miniature bushes and for tree amatures is a better and more realistic choice than lichen.
CNJ831
At least in my scale (1/22.5) lichen makes perfectly scaled tumbleweed [:D]
If you look at nature, what you see is GREAT variety. Lichen adds some of that, if there is enough other variety. I don’t think you can have too much variety as long as you know your forests and don’t put a saguaro cactus with a birch tree.
I do this, too. I really like the results. The chopped up lichen looks like dead branches and saplings.
I use scissors to cut it into 1/8" (approx) pieces, then scatter it on the forest floor. I attach it with scenic cement (thinned white glue with a little soap). As the lichen deteriorates it seems to become even more realistic in this type of application.
Hey Jeffrey, if you soak the lichen in glycerine for about a week, and then blot it dry with paper towel, it will stay plyable forever and will not fall apart. You can find glycerine at your local pharmacy in small 2 or 3 Oz. bottles.
Lichen is so 1970s.
I think foam is much, much better. Anytime I look at old RR layout or military diorama photos from the days when lichen was about all you could get, it’s other worldly look just jumps out at me.
My layout is a lichen free zone.
No gloss cote either! [:D]
I’ve had luck using Cat fur. The Cat doesn’t like it too much though
Man, that’s just cruel! Douglas & Maggie are not amused.
Mainetrains [banghead]
I use both. A varity of colours works for me. Neither really looks like real trees but few products out there do. I liked that idea of faux fur with added texture. Thanks for the idea I will try it ASAP.
Dave
Wuhh?? That’s silly, what else will go with my goldfish platform shoes? Now you jive turkey, you p’ssd me off, so instead of beating on you like the six million dollar man, I’m putting on my gold chains and driving my Torino to the disco… right after I add a foam tunnel to my Tyco brass track and grass mat model railroad.
I seem to have plenty of lichen on my backyard tree branches, and will probably find a use for it, as I try to do for a lot of plants here. The WS scenery stuff and other commercial stuff is a lot more expensive than the lichen I can pull off the bark of my trees. And the trees don’t seem to mind.