Brrrrrrr!  Lets go

Brrrrrrr!  Lets go skiing!

Charlie

Winter scene

I have a section of the layout, about 10 feet long, that I am doing as a winter scene.  I have the first few feet close to completion.  This is supposed to be in eastern US, a mix of hardwood and evergreen, that has had the timber harvested once so no huge trees.   In this first shot the foreground spur isn't finished because I don't know what will go there yet.  The waterfall on the left side doesn't have water yet. 

This is a closer look at the ridge.  I used smaller trees to force the perspective a bit on top of the hill.

As for techniques:  The snow on the rock face is either Dave Frary's "Snow Goop" or acrylic caulk painted with gloss white house paint. The speckles of snow are the house paint just lightly brushed on the rocks. The rock also got a shot of hair spray followed by a dusting of my dry snow mixture, a 50/50 mix of Woodland Scenics snow and baking soda (another product of experiments - WS snow by itself seemed too fluffy in HO).

After lots of trying different things, the deeper snow was finally shaped with Sculptamold then covered with a thin skin of acrylic caulk smoothed with a wet finger to cover the cottage cheese look of the Sculptamold. It was then painted gloss white, then got a layer of thinned white glue followed a dusting of snow mix with the excess vacuumed off. 

The low sort of grassy shrubs covered with snow are made from aquarium filter floss sprayed a dark gray from a rattle can, then pulled out very thin and cut to size.  Cutting the floss into small bits prevents getting the very long fibers.   (Why aquarium floss?  Because I had several aquariums some years ago and there was a bag of it in the shelf in the basement!) 

The small trees are dried plants from the craft store or green lichen tufts cut to size and touched with snow goop.  After planting,  the floss, lichen and dried plants got a shot of hairspray and snow mix dusted on from a tea strainer.  The larger evergreen is cut from a plastic plant found at the craft store. 

The larger deciduous trees are Woodland Scenics plastic tree armatures with some of the aquarium floss glued on the very tips of the branches.  The trees get some snow goop on the trunks and are sprayed with hairspray and a dusting of snow mix before planting. 

Here's a picture showing the small reservoir.  The waterfalls do not have water yet.  The area to the left is where I will start next once this scene is finished. You can see where the main line bridge will be - a ballasted deck girder bridge because I had to put a turnout on it.    

Finally here is a shot looking under the track toward the dam.  The dam, concrete walls and millrace (at the top of the right side but hidden by the piece of newspaper) are made from photo mounting board.  The water in the spillway is made with clear acrylic caulk spread on plastic food wrap and then cut to size after it dried.  A bit of white paint is then brushed on.  The stream bed is just painted at this point and needs a coat of fake water.   Obviously bridges needed also.  The track in front is a spur that will get a flimsy timber truss bridge. 

At the rate I am progressing this 10 foot section should be done well before the super Bowl ... Super Bowl 50 that is! 

George V.

It only takes 5 years to grow a 40ft tree on the east coast

I live in the east (Virginia) and you can add 100 ft tall hard woods with no problem. I had a Lumber company come on to my property and they cut a mix of 54 poplar, walnut, ash, and oak all were 80-100 ft tall. That was 6 years ago and they are all back in fact twice as many all do to the massive rain fall we get every year.

The Trees are only about 40-50- foot tall but for every one I had them take 5 grew back because with the large growth gone it allowed sunlight to hit the ground and all the saplings and seedlings grew like weeds. at 5 years the trees slow down on upward growth and the trunks start to thicken and the branches get longer.

I only had 2 out of every three trees cut on a half acre area and now it looks like the darkest Africa in the late spring. This spring I'm having 7-1/2 acres culled of 80% growth and 2 acres cut and cleared of everything stumps and all sprouts down to dirt and in that area I'm going to rebuild My Railroad Building and plant grass around all of the remaining area. Best part is all the lumber I'll need to build the building and shop will be free in trade from the mill for the more than 300 hardwood  trees they get and I get the lumber from 40 Sugar pines for my construction.

But you should feel free to add about 15 to 20 trees each over 9 inches tall in HO to your scene as they don't cut all the trees in any area when the loggers come through. They have to leave at least 10% of the large seed trees and evergreen cone trees to allow regrowth.

That is unless your modeling pre 1910 when there were no log cutting rules and the loggers cut down everything.

Dan

Wow!

Both posts look pretty darn good! I especially like the scene in your last picture George. The snow looks very convincing and the scene you are building is very interesting. Will be looking forward to the finished bridge and water in the spillways! Going to go put a heavier coat on!

Baking powder snow = bad news!

I thought I would add a comment to this thread.  I have done some additional work on my winter scene (shown above) but really got stalled (literally!) because the trains wouldn't run well in areas where the snow was on the tracks.  I spent a lot of time ensuring good wheel / rail contact, the flangeways in the snow were to standards, and the railhead was above the snow on the outside of the track to avoid it lifting the locomotive. 

Well, shock and surprise, the couple of locos I tried also would not run well on the non-snowy areas!  After much cleaning that did no good,  I finally traced it to the baking powder in my snow mix, which is the baking powder mixed with 50% with Woodland Scenics snow.   The BP got up in the electrical wipers and apparently corroded things. I finally cleaned the wheels and contacts with white vinegar, followed by 91% isopropyl (to clean and rinse the  vinegar out).  We're now back in operation but the snow around the tracks needs to be scraped down to the drywall mud that I used and probably given a vinegar soak as well.

Thought I would pass the word to anyone who might also be doing a winter scene. 

George V.      

Before the question is asked,

Before the question is asked, (was it baking soda or baking powder?) Baking soda is an alkaline salt much like bleach used in washing or added to pools. Baking powder would be worse, as it contains baking soda, an acid salt and a starch.

Possible baking soda and

Possible baking soda and vinegar mix can turn your loco into a frothing mad dog!

Steve

More winter pictures

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I first submitted pictures of my winter scene (part 1 of it, that is).   I retired in April and since then it's been several months of home remodeling and not much railroading.  But I finally got some pictures up on Photobucket of the east end of Frostbite Falls.  Rather than embedding links, I have added a link here to the slideshow of this album.  (OK, part of the problem is picking which two or three pictures to upload!)  Hope this works - if not, please let me know!  And for Kevin K, there are a couple of shots of the dam taken under the bridges.  

http://s1091.photobucket.com/albums/i397/TrainsandBoats/The%20Rochester%20and%20Richmond/Frostbite%20Falls/?albumview=slideshow

The house is from the "Sarah Plain and Tall" collection that Hallmark released several years ago.  The scale is a bit small and the detail such as the shutters is a bit heavy but not too bad.  The snow is that combination of Woodland Scenics and baking powder.  I sprayed the top of the structure with hair spray and sprinkled the snow on top.  Took about 4 or 5 coats to get good effects.  

George V.