Scenery: 2

Having more or less completed the scenery on one side of the layout, it's time to turn my attention to another corner. Given that we have the inclines, there's an opportunity to experiment with different ways of disguising the hardboard support structure.

Around the bridge I simple used brick and stone effect card to give a walled finish. I've also painted the grainy side of the exposed hardboard grey to see if that looks okay. On the inside of the incline I'll use brick card again, but on the other outside edge I wanted to try and sculpt a rock type look.

Here's what I did.

First of all I used a Woodland Scenics rock mould to cast some rock face material. I've used this above my tunnel entrances on another corner of the layout. Then I used Sculptamold to provide a bed for these rocks and to fill in the gaps. As it dried I poked it with my fingers, a small paintbrush and a scalpel to blend it all together.

You can see one of the rock mould pieces picked out in grey (and there's a pile of them in the bottom right-hand corner of the photo too(. Once it had all dried I added grey by dabbing spots on the surface and then brushing out unevenly over the surface allowing bits of white to remain. I then used a black wash over the top f that.

The end result is quite a pleasing effect and the sculptamold worked really well. As it dries you can wet your hand and smooth and shape the surface. On my hillside above the tunnel I kept going like this until I got the shape and finish I was looking for before I applied static grass.

 I thought the electrics and running the trains was going to be the most interesting part of building the model railway, but experimenting with the scenery has been a lot of fun and a challenge too.