Hard landscaping
The hard landscapeing on my layout is limited to two
sections, a
steep banked hill that runs along the back of the pasture section and
curves into the start of the terminus. The other section is a short
transverse section of steep hillside with a tunnel through it.
I considered a number of techniques for building these features, but
settled on a very simple solution of utilising expanded
polystyrene insulation panels (the panels are approximately 1200mm x
500mm x 50mm thick.). The main reasons for this were: that they were
cheap; allowed quite long sections to be fabricated without joins;
allowed ease of shaping; and
probably a few more reasons that will come to mind, oh yes they accept
most paints without any obvious drying problems.
The procedure is very simple.
You will need at least the following:
Polystyrene panels to suit requirement.
A tub of tile cement.
Suitable cutting tools (I found a pad saw most useful, though I guess a
hot wire cutter would be perfect).
Polyfiller/Tetrion/Plaster or something equivalent.
Possibly some water based paints, and a sponge.
Here's a corner section blocked up, and a single panel is used to form
the pasture, with some thin shims inserted at the rear to give the
gentle slope to the front of the layout (these can't be seen in the
photo below, the bit's sticking out the front were just some test
pieces I used to assess the slope).
Once the tile cement had set the fun begins. I draw a rough profile
either end of the blocked up section of the slope I want (a good thick
red line works well). Then it's a matter of cutting away with a
combination of saws, craft knives, rasps and whatever takes your fancy
to remove the material. Don't worry if you take off too much, you can
easily build it back up either with a graft of polystyrene, or with the
filler later. Do be prepared to be in a snow storm of polystyrene
that sticks to everything, and get's into everything!
Within minutes you'll have a rough profile, and a better understanding
of compound curve development, (it should be noted that you also
cut out your tunnels etc).
Remove any loose expanded polystyrene balls with a stiff brush or a rub
with your fingers, (it improves the adhesion of the filler).
You can now think about filling the surface.
Depending on your requirements you could now stick this form straight
down onto your layout using more tile cement, and fill in position, or
complete the filling on your workbench and fit the scenery to your
layout later. I did it in position, with hindsight the filler did make
a bit of a mess in my layout shed, perhaps on my workbench would have
been better.
I made a mix of pollyfiller and some green acrylic water based paint to
dye the white filler (the filler is best when it has the constituency
of butter), and applied this to the surface of the polystyrene.
Application was made with a selection of filler knives, offcuts and my
fingers!
The finished section should look like this:
The colour dried out very pale and
could
probably be mixed a bit stronger, however this was easily rectified by
applying a coat of green paint afterwards where necessary. I mixed my
green from
large tubes of yellow and blue acrylic, mixing it in a pallet as
I went along, this gave a nice mottled effect, and has quite a nice
effect later when scatter is applied. Take care to cover all the white
bits, they look terrible showing through and are quite hard to rectify
later.
This next picture shows the finished item, ignore the bridge, river and
the brown bits, more of them later!
Well you've seen them now, so I will now
mention features like bridges and tunnels. The bridge was already in
place, it was fixed during the construction of the base board (as
below, it's a standard Faller kit and very representative of the type
of bridges found in Bavaria).
The blocked polystyrene was arranged around the bridge (the river bead
has been raised a bit in the picture below, the feet of the bridge
being inset as necessary),
and filled as
required, this was a bit fiddley, particularly as it was necessary to
make the bridge encastre (I remember my stress analysis terms now) and
thus the larger 'portal' had to be filled in. The bridge had been
painted, but not weathered, I'll do this later. I also painted in the
river, this will receive some coats of varnish at a later date. Tunnel
mouths can be similarly inserted and held in place with the filler. (In
the picture on the left below, please ignore the coal mine, it has no
business being there!)
To centre the tunnel mouth I made
the
aperture larger than needed, and inserted a rectangular plywood insert
with an oversized tunnel portal cut into it. This allowed me to fix the
hillside in place, and then get the tunnel mouth exactly in the right
place to match the track, also I found that the tunnel portal stuck
better to the plywood than the polystyrene, again using the now
ubiquitous tile cement. (I bought a job lot of tunnel portals off ebay,
I liked this one best it's nice and narrow and gives a very close fit
look when the loks come through it. Although this particular portal was
still in it's original sealed packaging I think it is quite old).
Touching up will obviously be necessary, but this can easily be done as
you can apply as many layers of the filler as you feel is necessary, it
can also be textured I found a 'spontex' type kitchen sponge was very
useful, let the filler dry a bit and then with the damp sponge draw it
over the surface. A combination of smooth and rough surfaces can be
achieved. Once hard the filler can also be filed and 'carved' to a
certain degree to give you exactly the finish you want (if you possess
a Dremel I guess you can allow the Gutzon Borglum in you out).
That's about it really now for the hard landscape, your all set to
detail it with paint effects and the nice things you can buy
like clump foliage, scatter, trees etc.
