Pont-y-dulais: Greening up...

The small South Wales micro OO layout I've been building has been sat dormant for a few weeks since I last pushed on with the foundation of the scenery. I decided to spend some time on it yesterday and made a few hours of progress...

The layout is only short, and quite narrow too, so it's not got a lot of depth but I was keen to try and get some visual depth by careful attention to the scenery. I've been reading and absorbing South Wales coal branch line photographs, especially Gordon Edgar's volume on Wales, as I was keen to capture the colours and textures of a summers day, lush green (it always rains right?) and overcast sky - but bright...

The Peckett shown here is very much a work in progress - it's been repainted, the cab slightly modified and some 3 links fitted - but it's far to clean and presentable. However it's looking the part in these photos.

The first step was to use Woodland Scenics 'earth blend' fine turf applied over dilute PVA painted straight onto the green areas. Then some mid-green coarse turf was applied to give some variation on texture. This was secured with Woodland Scenics scenic cement with an eye dropper. Then a mix of fibres, picked for the lush colours, were applied - all short 1-2mm initially. After the first layer I used Peco layering spray before adding more coatings.

The tree line and bushes are recycled from the childhood layout - this was a Woodland Scenics forest in a box, with white metal armatures. They were largely all the same colour and texture so I refreshed them by breaking and cutting them into more random shapes before applying the layering spray and adding Green Scenes foliage of different shades (recommended by Gordon Gravett's book).

The result is a nice variation in texture, that contrasts well with the stock and the dark ballast. Next up I need to work out if I'm adding telegraph poles and the like, before adding some greenery to the front edge and tackling the yard surface. However, before all that the layout's left hand end needs some attention - I'm building an occupation crossing before blending this into the yard, and then adding the greenery at that end. The shed also needs more attention. This was built quickly on Saturday morning, although time was taken to match brickwork on the edges and carve the bricks round the corners. The back of the shed will be portrayed as rebuilt in concrete breeze blocks, as if at some point a loco ran away and crashed through the back wall, causing a rebuild. 

It's been nice working on my own project, but I do love designing and building layouts on commission too - so do get in touch if you're interested in having a fully scenic micro or small layout building to your requirements. More soon...