I have a very large mountain on my layout that I made by building a cardboard strip web on a wooden frame work and then glueing layer after layer after layer of newspapers on top. Enough layers of newspaper made a surprisingly strong scenic surface. I have had this in place for about six years now and it has held up well. I use a lot of woodland scenics tree kits to populate the mountainside with trees. My problem is attaching the trees so they stand up straight rather than at an angle as would be the case if I used the trees straight out on the box. Planting them using the base that comes with them on a sloping surface would result in the trees growing at an unnatural angle. Real trees always grow straight up regardless of the slope of the land they are on. Simply bending the base doesn’t work because it just springs back to where it was. If I had a styrofoam scenery base I would not have this problem because I could just embed the trees in the styrofoam by hand.
Tough one George. Do you have access to the inside of your shell? If you do, you could glue some solid material to the inside, and drill and mount the trees that way.
What about hot glue? Just use a large blob and hold the tree in place while it sets. Then paint the glue after the fact.
By the way, trees grow toward the light, not necessarily straight up.
Styrofoam or even small scraps of wood would work, though wood would require drilling.
My theory is that first you would drill holes from the front side, marking where you wanted to place the trees. Then go around to the back side, and probably using hot glue, place your blocks where the holes are. Finally come back and plant your trees.
George,
Depending on how you look at your investment in the trees, you could cut the bases off, drill or punch a hole in your “ground” then attach a block of styrofoam to the under side as mentioned previously, and finally press the trunk through the hole and into the styrofoam.
NYCRR1
Drill a hole where you want the tree to be. Make sure you drill as vertical as you can, but don’t go crazy. Many real trees do lean somewhat. Cut off the flat base of the tree and apply a liberal amount of white glue to the lower trunk. Now just pop it in the hole and you’re all set.
Thanks to all for the replies. One idea that I ran across in the World’s Greatest Hobby video, hosted by Micheal Gross, was to drill a small hole into the bottom of the trunk and insert a small solid wire. This wire would then embed into the styrofam glued underneath the shell if I can get that installed. Incidently, there is a lot of good information in that video that will transfer to what we do, even though the project layout is HO.