Last night on a whim, I decided to count the trees on the mostly finished 20% of my layout. That area is rural, the town and yard come later. The count did not include pipe cleaner trees, puffball forests, or window screen background trees etc. Just individual discrete trees - mostly homemade.
To my surprise there are 152 on 90 square feet. A few places could use more. The Section includes fields, brooks, a pond, roads, rock cliffs, buildings etc as well as some forest (track too [;)]).
This got me to wondering what the average “tree per square foot” count is for other layouts. I guess the answers will be low for city and desert layouts. Maybe we should not consider urban rail yards.
My layouts 100 sq. ft. and I was figuring I’d have to make around 200 trees. I’m mostly making my own furnace filter and polly fiber trees. (no puff balls)
What are window screen trees? I’ve never heard of those.
It really depends what you are modeling. Florida is a whole lot different from Kansas, which is quite different from Arizona. If you are modeling the Great Plains, you won’t have as many trees (or the same type) on your layout as you would if you were modeling say, Maine.
The trick is to fight the temptation to “over-populate” or cram your layout with too much scenery, track, or structures. If you want to give the impression of forests or groups of trees, keep them small or isolate them to the exterior edges of your layout. The contrast between the trees and open space creates visual interest.
And, bushes, shrubs, and undergrowth also create a natural look that is different than trees. I use left over scraps of various colored ground foam to accomplish this.
At the moment, none. (I don’t model root systems down here in the netherworld, and every millimeter of track that I’ve laid so far is destined to be hidden.)
In the future, lots (the area I’m modeling was/is covered with a cedar forest.)
OTOH, if I was planning to model the area I live in as it was BT (before tourists) there would be very few. The Dessicated Desert isn’t noted for timber production.
I wonder what some of the old-timers who passed through this valley, watching the levels in their water barrels drop and hoping against hope that they’d find a spring or ruvulet before they ran dry, would think if they could see the dancing fountains in front of the Bellagio…
They are nice against the backdrop if you need evergreens.
Take a strip of screen 1-3 inches tall and as long as you like. Cut out narrow and tall triangles from one long edge. Overlap the cuts BEFORE the bottom so that what results is a row of trees of various heights. It’s OK to have bits of random wire edges. It makes the trees less perfect.
Then, using two pairs of needle nose pliers make a 30 degree bend along the center line of each tree and between the trees to give the screen more than two dimensions. When laid flat it will be about 1/4" thick. Spray paint if you like.
Spray with adhesive and sprinkle on dark green ground foam. Repeat for more texture. Optional - Seal with hairspray. Voila! A row of background pines. This photo doesn’t show how they are made but it’s the best I have handy. Look at the right rear. They are a nice gentle transition to two dimensional mountain backdrops. I think of them as fractal trees.
Edit: I found a photo. This was after the first application of foam.
I have exactly three trees. I built them as an experiment. Once the weather forces me back indoors, I will probably build more, along with more ground cover, people, detailing of building exteriors, weathering of cars…
The lsit never ends. I would like to get more scenery done by Christmas. My first great grand child will be here and I want to have it look pretty for her! [:D]
I have well over 100 trees and I’m not half done. There’s no way you can model a railroad in the south and not have a lot of trees. The problem here is about 30% are pines, 40% are decidious, and 30% is nothing but a huge tangle of Kudzu Vine. [:)] Mixing the two tree types together at the same altitude is tough to make look right so I’m cheating by having some small hills and having more pines up there. The Kudzu is a real challenge. It’s all over the place here so you can’t ignore it. I’m using WS foliage mats and stretching them out to give them a vine-like appearance and running them up trees and utility poles but it still doesn’t look right. Any other southern modelers out there that have a better answer?
I’m modeling a heavily forested area and I have a lot of trees in a 2 x 2 area I have about 60 trees. I will have about 6 times that when the 4 x4 area this town is in is complete. These are sedium.
I model Northeastern PA, lots of trees. I have about 125 or so descrete foreground trees. If you count the puff ball trees covering my ridges, at least a thousand, and I’m about half done.
My layout is a 12’x12’ L in a corner, still under landscape construction. My current count is about 350 trees(evergreen & deciduous). I am modeling northwestern Montana.
never counted them, but as I’m (trying) modelling based on New England, I can say the more the merier![:D] trees also have a good habbit of covering my horible groundwork…an added bonus!
I have an N-scale layout with around 350 trees. Many are bunched together on mountain terrain. I used ‘Supertrees’ by Scenic Express. A bag of their material yielded a lot of trees for my scale and turned out to be cost effective (pennies per tree). I don’t have any pictures of all the trees on my mountain terrain, but here’s a shot of some individual trees on my layout:
Karl, that is a great technique. So simple, but what great results. And it’s perfect for areas with limited space. I’m going to try this method of making trees. Too good an idea not to.
A couple hundred on the layout. A couple hundred in the garage waiting for finish. A couple hundred in plastic bags waiting to be processed. A couple hundred in the garden waiting to be picked. About 50 still a Michaels waiting to be assembed into Norway and White Pine. Fortunatly I like making and planting trees. I have about 25 different species.
At last count, right about 700 trees on the layout. We just expanded benchwork and track, and there are 380 trees ready to plant when the scenery goes on, but I don’t think that will be enough. Best guess says it will take a total pf 1400 to finish.
It’s mountainous terrain, and small pines make a nice velvet pine forest, but we use a lot of tricks to make fewer trees look like bigger forests. Clifflines that break up forests save trees. Roads and creeks save trees. Ridgelines above treeline save trees. When all else fails, we have a small sawmill, and about 30 tree stumps to save a few more trees.
I am currently between layouts so I don’t really have any trees on a layout at this particular moment but there is a future!!!
My freelanced railroad is an Appalachian Crossing railroad - the [i]Seaboard and Western Virginia Railway - and will require heavy forestation. I have always constructed wire armature trees, a technique I adopted out of Kalmbach’s HO Railroad That Grows - it has always worked for me and, although maybe a little labor intensive, makes outstanding trees. In 2009, however, I am going to the N Scale Convention in Portland, Oregon - my wife has two sons in the immediate vicinity and I have a daughter lives in Olympia, Washington - and on my way home I’m going to go into Eastern Idaho or out onto the prairie of Wyoming and ship home a couple of hundred pounds of sagebrush clippings to serve as tree armatures. In my younger days I cut down and burned up a million dollars worth of that stuff.
