Tea for scenery?

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I was looking at the contents of a tea bag and was thinking that there must be some use for it on my HO layout. My mind is just not being very creative. About the only thing I could come up with would be for ground cover in a forest.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for the help.

Ken

2

They will dry out… A Fall scene,with the dry leaves fallen from a tree???

Cheers,

Frank

3

Thanks Frank, that is what I was thinking, just thought there might be some other use that I am not thinking of.

Thanks again

Ken

4

Hi Ken

I have used it for garden soil and potting mix

Grows excellent HO plastic flowers and looks the part

regards John

5

Wasn’t there a Broadway play or movie called Tea and Scenery ? Or was it Tea and Symphony ?

6

Tea and Sympathy, IIRC.

Tea makes excellent scale mulch - and you can build an industry around it. Your input is anything vegetable (tree chips, sawdust, restaurant leftovers, expired supermarket produce) much of it delivered in garbage trucks. The mixing and culturing processes are (usually) under cover, but the semi-finished product is stored in open bins under shelter (think oversize carport.) After aging, the mulch is scooped up by front-end loaders and delivered to a conveyor head. From there it gets a final screening, is bagged, palletized and off to market. A small operation would only deliver locally (possibly into the bed of Joe Suburbia’s pickup) while a major plant would take up the output of a small city and deliver to organic farmers all over - possibly by rail.

Data courtesy of How Do They Do That? on the Science Channel. The tube isn’t always about boobs donkeybrains who mess up good documentaries with uninformed chatter.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with forests that mulch themselves)

7

Thanks everyone for the info.

I am not sure the mulch factory would work with a 1940/50’s time period. I don’t think we were thinking green back then, but its a good idea.

8

Gidday, on our old Club HO layout , dried used teas leaves were used as “cinder” ground cover in the main yard. There were a lot of tea drinkers in the club then [:)]. Alas I have no photos.

Cheers, the Bear.

9

Thanks Bear, I have a small yard that could some help.

10

Tea leaves can also simulate chunks of bark under/around stacked logs, or anywhere else that such debris might have been found:

  • Near the spar tree at the woods loadout.
  • On the ground (and floating in the pond) at the log dump.
  • under the conveyor that feeds the slash burner.
  • etc…
    Also, while commercial mulch processors weren’t common in the transitiion era, a lot of small farmers and savvy suburban homeowners made their own compost, mixing it in open-sided bins ranging in size from three by six feet to small garage.

A small amount of finely-divided green tea leaves, scattered sparingly, could simulate bovine droppings in a cattle pen.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

11

Bear,

I can’t resist, Have you heard about,the Indian Chief,who drank so much tea,that he died in his own, tea pee…Lol

Cheers,

Frank

12

[(-D][(-D][(-D][(-D][bow][swg]

Cheers, the Bear.[:D]

13

I’ve used lots of used tea leaves on the layout. You can grind it up to a fine powder or leave it coarse. Either way it’s great ground cover. I’ve also glued it onto trees to resemble dead leaves.

This is my favourite blend of tea, crushed twigs and powdered clay

The clay isn’t really visible, although it’s in there. I add it because it makes the mix greyer. It’s a pretty strong brown otherwise.

14

Forest ground cover is a good and useful idea (yes, I have used loose tea that way), I have also found it useful as garden mulch. Because most teas have been well dried and thoroughly minced, I find the color holds up nicely over the years. Used sparingly, dried tea also works as leaves piled in gutters or replicating the dirt and crud that collects beteen the pavement and rails at crossings.

Why not steep your tea and use it as a wash to color cliffs, or other surfaces that need just a hint of brownish color?

Don H.

15

Thanks everyone for the great ideas.

Ken

16

Stealing the thread for a tangentially-related issue: using TEA as a traffic commodity in a model railroad operating scheme.

According to information from an exhibit years ago (pre-Hurricane Ike) at the Center for Transportation & Commerce (ie Railroad Museum), in Galveston. Texas: Tea was imported via Oakland or San Pedro CA or Longview WA and shipped in sacks & wooden containers by rail (probably boxcar load) to Thos.Lipton Co. Galveston. There it was blended & packaged, especially for teabags, and shipped nationwide.

However, Galveston: A History by David G. McComb (1986) says that the Lipton venture, considered by the Port as a revenue raiser, did not help the port much. McComb says although the Port built dock facilities for Lipton, they went unused. He says tea was shipped into Houston in small lots and trucked to the Galveston plant. (p.201)

Lipton’s plant in Galveston was on Galveston Wharves (port terminal switching line) just about even with the letter “S” on “Strand” on this map.

Lipton had 8 major tea processing & packing plants in North America, according to a story that Lipton had picked Virginia for America’s largest tea plant in a Commonwealth Natural Gas Corp ad for industrial development in Virginia’s James River Valley. Business Week May 12, 1956 p.122

Tea processors in Texas with 50 or more employees in1962: 1 Galveston, 1 Dallas, per Atlas of Texas p.77

US tea consumption 1955 per capita consumption 2/3 pound = ca. 50,000 tons for US per World Almanac 1955 p.663 (At 50 tons per boxcar

17

Quicker to use coffee beans, they can be ground[banghead] straight away

18

Well, tea would work, assuming it was fully dried out. For decades, dried coffee grounds were a mainstay on layouts - especially the tinplate ones of my youth.

The thing is, the stuff - coffee or tea - needs to be oven dried fairly quickly or mold will form. I used cookie sheets with tin foil, and spread the wet grounds on the foil and baked long enough to thorougly dry them. The stuff will last - and I have a container of grounds that are just fine - grounds collected in the early 1970s!!!