Little Aspley Grows

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I have the trackwork now working for the Cement Silo and the other two industries near it, so today was a bit of scenery work and a lot of running trains on the new tracks. Besides my little bit today, Kev and Ralph were doing a really great rendition of Laurel and Hardy as they were trying to get the measurements of the layout and input them into Kev's laptop computer - it was hilarious and we all reckon the club is fantastic as we never have to pay to see comedians!

B1 was also busy checking out the N scale exhibition layout to make sure it was all in tip top shape for the AMRA show in a week and a half's time.

So back to Little Aspley.

The scenery work was to just tart up three or four square feet of the peninsula currently designated with a little sign as Little Aspley. I got out the 50/50 white glue and water mix, with a few drops of detergent, and brushed it onto the foam. Then I sprinkled on the dirt I have found down at the creek behind the club. This dirt I have crushed up and dried and then sieved it. What came through a tea strainer is what I used today.

I sprinkled it onto the wet 50/50 mix and then got out the grass. I used the Woodland Scenics "Burnt Grass" Fine Turf as the major colour and also used the "Burnt Grass" Fine Turf from JTT which is a tad different in colour as well. This gives a bit of different colouring in spots just like in nature. To add to this I got out the Woodland Scenics "Weeds" Fine Turf and added some spot colour around the place and in particular along the drains either side of the trackage.

Once done, I got out my little Xuron squirt bottle with the hypodermic on the end and squirted on a covering of the 50/50 mix over the top of the foam. Then I did a slight random scattering of the three foams again and that was it!

After lunch I did spot a block of foam I had in the corner that had a pile of trees we'd gotten from WeHonest stuck in it. These trees I had already scattered with a range of Woodland Scenics fine turf foams and held it on with hairspray. So these trees looked lonely and separated from nature, so I grabbed a pig sticker and a pair of needle nose pliers and planted them.

You can check out a low level view in the video I took of driving a train through the cutting.
http://youtu.be/kdzaVUvHlOE

And for the heck of it, here is one of my EMD SD40-2 locos in Missouri Pacific colours with a short freight heading out of the large cutting.

So till next time, take some time to watch the grass grow.