Finally some more scenery is in the works.

The mountain in the corner is becoming a reality.

I start with a cardboard basket weave, secured with hot glue. Covered that with masking tape and sculpting plaster.

 

I like the irregular look of sculpting plaster. There will be connifer trees along the top ridge of this hill, with some dark green forest shading on the wall. Also, some smaller deciduous trees along the edge of the "forest". Between trees and the tracks grass with bushes and some rocks peaking through the ground. To the left this will turn into an overgrown rockwall.

The tunnel portal on the right is just a stand-in. This will become a rock cut after I realigned the track to allow for better switching in Talheim.

Here's the corner between the tunnels at Abzweig Talheim in the masking tape stage.

Finally, some areas have very low clearance inside tunnels, so I need to occasionally catch pantographs and push them down, to avoid interference with scenery, or structural, features. After all I want to eventually build catenary in the visibile sections of the layout, but not in the tunnels.

This catch was made from 12AWG copper wire, and simply screwed to wooden blocks. The overgrown rockwall I mention above will sit atop of this.

I created this whole "tight space" situation because I didn't properly take the width of scenery into account when planning the layout. I have a couple more of those cases, and will attack them in due time.

I should start naming everything on the layout. Not only towns. But also streets, stores, industries, tunnels, and scenic features. That would make it so much easier to talk about things.