Tips for Realistic Track: #2: Overgrowth

Once I made a small diorama for an old disused branchline, and I used some materials I'd like to share for creating some really old and overgrown sections of track on your layout.

In this picture, every scenic element is actually loose, not permanent! I wanted to create this on a wooden board to see what the track would look like with different scenic materials. Dried sand is used with sifted dirt, rocks found out in the yard and on the driveway in various courses, and some sprinkled ground foam from Woodland Scenics. In the corners of the photo are small twigs, moss, and lichen. This was very beautiful for and old section of Toby's tramway, this track running from the mountains down to the marketplace in the village.

So if your diorama or railway layout is going to be temporary or permanent, as I have stressed before, it is a good idea to do a little research and study from life, from photographs online to other model railroaders and their work. This will help you achieve the look you want.

Here are some links to somevery useful and successful scenic products you might know:

• Scenic Express
• Woodland Scenics
• K & M Countryscene
• Noch
• Busch
• Faller

Visions of Sodor ~ The Watermill

Here is the Watermill on Thomas' Branchline. This was always a well-known scene on Sodor, and so I wanted to recreate the diorama for my model railway to take photographs and film.

Here my green afghan quilt is used for grass. The hills are made with spare wood planks, pieces and boards placed underneath, with cardboard boxes to make the shapes. As nothing is permanent, this is a great method for me as I can change the scene to how I want it to look. I could rearrange the Woodland Scenics trees or the rocks until I am happy with the final finished scene. Bushes are spare Woodland Scenics ground foam, and the water is a sheet of plexiglass.

I built the watermill and the bridge from scratch using textured card stock paper, cutting the pieces with scissors, assembled with glue and Scotch tape, and weathered them using acrylic paint.

In this picture I recreated the scene for Percy's Ghostly Trick episode, using a large office light with a blue fluorescent bulb for the moonlight, and a small LED light taped inside the watermill to light the interior. I made the window panes from scratch, with clear plastic for the window glass so I could make this beautiful effect for this scene.

I also made these figures and the boat from scratch! The boat is also paper card, cut and glued into the hull shell, with strips cut for the seats, rudder, and separate oars. You can see how I made the figures here.

This was one of my favorite scenes on the Thomas show, and it wasn't to difficult to model. It took me about a half and hour to set everything up, and then I filmed the scenes I wanted to capture from the episodes. It is really fun to learn how the modelling team on the Thomas show made their sets, and it is great practice as a model railroader, too.