I live on the Canadian prairies and the weather this summer has alternated between too rainy, too hot, and too smoky (due to forest fires 3-4 hours north of me), so I’ve been spending a lot of time in the cool, dry, smoke-free basement. This became an opportunity to make some progress on Bydemill – my 7mm scale, Edwardian era Great Western Railway branch line layout.
Nothing makes a layout look better than that first layer of scenery, so – after building a footbridge and carving the terrain to accommodate it – I gathered together tools and materials and got to work transforming my tan oasis into a green and pleasant land.
I started with a dirt-coloured ground foam (is it foam to apply to the ground, or foam that has been ground up? I suspect both), followed by dark green short static grass. (I did not use a grass applicator for this – I wanted it to lie relatively flat.) Both were applied in a patchy manner to create a random base for the next layer: static grass.
I mixed two blends of long static grass – a yellow and bright green for high points and embankments, and a mix of bright and dark green for the low areas – and applied these using my Noch grass applicator. I’ll have to go back and clean up some spots on the cess, but that’s easy enough to do.
I’m very pleased with the results and look forward to adding the next layers – including weeds and flowers, shrubs and bushes, and trees. I have plenty of suitable tree armatures salvaged from my Port Rowan layout, so this should progress fairly quickly.
The Model Railway Show 