Good day everyone. I am starting to plan my first scene. For my first theme I want to design a winter display for the next holiday season. I talked briefly with the clerk at the train hobby store. From what I understand I should start with plywood and then paint that plywood green for grass, or brown for earth. We did not talk about it, but I figure that for a winter scene I would want to paint the board white. I am sure for some of you that this is all pretty elementary, so please bear with me. If any of you have some different suggestions for a different color, or a specific color of white, please share it with me. What type of paint would I use for this? Flat? Semi-Gloss?
Next question I have is about snow. What have you found that works the best for giving the landscape a look of snow on the ground? I was kinda thinking of that can snow stuff that you can spray on, but I might be way off base on this.
Can any of you provide me with links of pictures on the web that I can took at to get ideas?
Why not use white foam on plywood. Grind it with a wire brush and a drill. With this you already have a white snowy surface. You can glue grass, dirt, or what ever you want to this where ever you wish. You can also use what you ground off as snow in places that you want it (roofs, trees, etc). I have seen winter scenes and they are very attractive. Not many do them though. Play with it some and you’ll discover things on your own. Good luck.
Thanks Bill. I found their website and bookmarked it. It looks like they have nice stuff.
On a side note, I went to the library this morning. I checked out a bunch of books and they even had a video.
The video is released by, “World’s Greatest Hobby” This video is incredible! The video walks you step by step through building your first model railroad from the ground up. They started with building the bench from plywood and 2x4s. Then working with foam to glue on top of the plywood. Then gluing the tracks onto the foam. They walk you through building the buildings and painting them! They walk you through everything. This is just want I needed. A walk through beginners guild. Awesome. To anyone that’s new to the hobby like me I would highly recommend! The best part is it was FREE to check out!
The title of the video is “Building Your First Model Railroad” by World’s Greatest Hobby.
If you grind beaded styrofoam get ready for quite a statically charged mess. Work with a piece outdoors before deciding your choice of material. Extruded(pink or blue) painted and sceniced w/ Woodland’s products would be a much better choice an a lot less mess. Plus roadbed/ track can be glued directly- I wouldn’t put track on white styrofoamExperiment first, you may find a product that works great, that hasn’t been mentioned yet.
Bob K.
Actually, I ahve heard that for snow, it is better scenic the Landscape in the normal Green/brown tones first, and then. put on your snow material on top. This way you can create a light snow effect if you want, with a little grass showing through, or you can do a heavy snow, and just have the roads cleared, with the brown/black showing.
We just got home from the Zoo. A model train club has setup a display for the holidays. One of their displays is exactly how you suggested. It looked pretty nice. I got lots of ideas from looking at their displays.
The best snow scenes I have ever seen (sorry about the pun) were by Rand Hood in a series of articles that were in MR within the last 5 yrs. He had a diorama that was amazing, Ice between the rails, frozen stream etc. See if you can get your hands on a copy of the series…Not sure of the dates (maybe some help from other readers??) Maybe you can do a search of old articles online NMRA etc. Well worth tracking down…