Beyond The Horizon

As a metaphor, the horizon carries many connotations. We see it as a point of reference, a place to aspire to; or something to move beyond to satisfy an explorer’s curiousity. As a reference point it helps us orient to a location. In school and in art classes,...

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...

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,...

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...

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...