Category: Landscape Modeling
Landscape Lessons: Applied
I’ve been upgrading some of the first areas of scenery on the layout, using new materials now on the market. Products like static grass sheets are significantly better than the older stuff. As the two photos show, the landscape can be studied like any other prototype and the knowledge applied to modeling. I’m just [...]
Here’s to the mundane, ordinary and boring
This can be a funky hobby. For decades this hobby was driven by the spectacular, the out-of-the-ordinary and the oddball, all in the quest for “modelgenic” layouts and scenes. Layouts overflowed with huge spindly trestles spanning bottomless mountain gorges and had whole neighborhoods of funky buildings dripping with gingerbread trim. It didn’t stop there. A [...]
Trees are Prototypes-2: American Sycamore
My favorite tree in the landscape has to be the American sycamore, with its massive trunk, branching structure and distinctive mottled bark. With common names like the planetree, buttonwood and buttonball-tree and reaching to heights of one hundred feet, the American sycamore is one of the largest trees among the eastern hardwoods. Growing natively in all [...]
Bowing Out Gracefully
No, I’m not referring to stepping down as editor of O Scale Trains Magazine. That’s old news by now. I’m referring to the exit strategies we use to transition from the on-scene portions of a layout to staging. The use of staging trackage in some form is now well known and accepted for the illusion [...]
A Matter of Perspective
There’s a clichéd old photo that shows an N scale freight car stacked on top of an HO car with both stacked on top of a quarter-inch scale car, in an attempt to show the difference in size between the three scales. All this does is show the difference in size of freight cars. To [...]
Trees are prototypes too
Most of us wouldn’t think of scratchbuilding a locomotive without learning about the prototype first. Usually a modeler will want to have as much detailed info about a specific engine as possible, same with a freight car or structure. For a lot of modelers now, the days of generic modeling are past. There are just [...]
Landscape Lessons
The landscape has distinct layers of foilage you can model effectively with careful observation. In this photo Layer 1 consists of grasses, weeds and taller ground cover plants. Layer 2 is made up of small and medium sized shrubs and bushes (natives like black berries or invasives like honeysuckle. Layer 3 is the leaf canopy of [...]
Mind the edges
In a painting, the way an artist handles the edges of objects adds a great deal to the finished work. He may render a hard edge, one that is sharply defined, to emphasize a point of focus. Or, the artist may soften an edge, making it less distinct, even fuzzy, in order to let the [...]
Concrete platform
This project has lingered unfinished for over a year. I finally wrapped it up over the holidays. It represents the remnants of an old loading area next to the Pole Track on the layout. As you can see from the photos it is right on the front edge where one can get a close look [...]
A walk on the wild side
Stanley Hayes formed the Hayes Track Appliance Company in 1903. In 1911, he moved the company from Geneva, NY to Richmond, Indiana where it still operates as part of the Western-Cullen-Hayes Corporation. Mr. Hayes was an accomplished railroad professional and businessman, who had a keen interest in the natural world. He was concerned about the [...]
