Scenery on the Tuolumne Forks Model Railroad

Bob, why don't you have any mountains on the railroad since you have mining? Well, mountains in quarter-inch scale, take up a lot of space and what I enjoy most are buildings. And so in order to get enough room for buildings, I kept the layout fairly flat. Jack Bridges and I kid a lot about this because I usually if I go about an inch off the ground, my scenery doesn't look too good. So I tend to deal with clutter and the little details on the ground.

Even though as soon as you leave, I am going to tear out one end of the room and put some mountains in. Put some mountains in. You gotta be forced to it. That's right. People are shaming you.

Is that because you're doing logging and no mountains? There's no mountains. Yeah, what are your thoughts on scenery? Now you have a beautifully scenic layout that uses a lot of, I suppose, the ordinary techniques that we all use but it's beautifully done. What do you think people should do with machinery?

How should, what should they try to accomplish with scenery? I think it's important that they keep the colors muted and blend them together. Often people will say two Alamy forks and blends together nicely. Uh huh. I also try and use a scenery as scenic blocks but in my case, I've used trees to do this or large buildings rather than mountains.

I tried some blocking with mountains in here once but I just don't have the space to put mountains in. And I happen to believe scenery is important. I like to run nice trains through nice scenes. Uh huh. That's what I enjoy.

And I would characterize my layout as kind of an operating diorama. What I enjoy most is building and running the trains through the scenes so far. Maybe down the line, I'll start operating. What about some of your scenery techniques? Well, as you say, they're pretty standard.

I use the crumpled paper and I usually use, I don't like... Hydrocal, it's hard to get out here so I don't use it but I use texture cement or texture paint, I should say texture paint. And I dipped the papers in the texture paint and dripping up, putting it over on the scenery shell. And it works just like plaster. It works just like plaster but it's a little soft, not quite as hard.

I've also done something. It might be a little different and I will take my dirt and I will mix it with water and white glue and I make mud. And then I will brush that on the surface and it gives a very nice ground surface. Oh! And there's a lot of loose material on the layout in that it is poured on and then white glue down which is a traditional way to go.