Welztalbahn: Scenes

Herr Moessner is hard at work in his garden

Urgent Delivery

The ramp is definitely too high. I'll cover the sides with Heki foam walls, which will widen the ramp a bit and cut away the hardboard under ramp, so that it sits at the same level as the track.

Blending in the gardens

[ Schrebergarten posts ]

In my spare time this weekend, the garden spots finally got the greenery treatment. It took several days for the Scuptamold ground shapes to dry.

Below is what the area looked like yesterday morning. The Scuptamold is dry, the rails are painted, and the retaining wall near the turnout is glued in place. That wall is a concession to adding the longer run-around track for switching, and now having a bit less space for the garden spots.

Since I didn't want flock and grass fiber to get into the gardens, or the existing track ballast, everything was covered up with blue painters tape.

Then creative chaos took over, the scenery supplies and tools came out in force, occupying every available square inch around the work area. It might have been a good idea to move the trains out of the way ...

I started off with a base cover made from matte medium and dirt, topped with flock, more matte medium, sand, and static grass. An approach I used elsewhere on the layout.

For the retaining wall I aimed for an "overgrown grass" effect. I loaded a mix of short and long fibers in the grassinator, and shot the mix into glue on the ledge. It didn't quite work the way I intended, but I got some grass cover and left it at that. The rather ridiculous amount of fibers in the ditch between wall and track, as well as all over the wall, is shown below. I scraped and vacuumed off quite a bit of those fibers afterwards.

I used fine Woodland Scenics ballast mix as ground cover for the parking lot and added some fine green turf to represent moss and weeds.

Once I was confident that I would no longer need the grassinator, I carefully took off the blue tape. The scene looks quite presentable already. The grass got a bit too close to the mainline. Time for the weed whackers to come through again.

As expected the area at the wall looks a bit naked and needs more structure. That's where the trees go. Below photo also shows (not quite sharp) that in the end the overgrown wall effect kind of worked out despite my best efforts to mess it up.

The floor for the Koef shed is next, followed by ballast and weathering for the tracks, and some detailing.

Ground

[ Schrebergarten posts ]

In the last couple days I fixed the track in place, installed cork underlay under and around the locomotive shed and the adjacent parking lot, and glued the track in place. It actually sits on a bead of clear silicone, but close enough. Tonight I got the gardens tacked in place and shaped the ground in the area using tinted Scuptamold and the artists spatulas in the front of the picture.

When I was done, I realized I hadn't painted the track yet. That's gonna be fun in tight quarters ...

Schrebergarten - On the layout

[Schrebergarten posts]

Test fitting the garden spots on the layout. Despite the runaround modifications in Talheim, the gardens still fit the space quite nicely. Some slight adjustments and gentle application of Scuptamold, paint, and ground cover will blend everything together. With that done I can also finish blending layout and backdrop in this area.

Earlier posts describing the build can be found here.

Schrebergarten - Second garden

[Schrebergarten posts]

While finishing the first garden in June, I had run out of fences and didn't really want to fill the garden area before it could be properly delineated. Vacation, events, other projects, work, and summer in general got in the way, so I didn't return to working on the gardens until last weekend.

I painted and weathered enough fences to close the gap, and then started with the remaining vegetables from Busch's kit 1222, and some more Noch plants made from various fibers and foliage.
Contrary to the first garden, the second one was supposed to be well maintained and very neat.

Making and planting the vegetables takes forever, but isn't particularly hard. Once I was satisfied with the vegetable part of the garden, I enclosed the remainder with blue painters tape and made a nice dense lawn from Scenic Express' Late Summer static grass.

For the paths between the vegetable beds I used very fine N-scale ballast from Arizona Rock & Minerals. So far, so good. Now I need to wait for the glue to dry and test fit the gardens on the layout before making a couple fruit trees, and moving on to building the parking area, which also serves the adjacent loco shed.

First Schrebergarten done

[Schrebergarten posts]

I finished off the first garden with tomatoes from Scenic Express, and a Heki fruit tree. It's owner enjoys the afternoon sun with a cold beer, and you can tell that he had more than a few beers before ...

I have ideas for the second garden spot. Just need to find some time to turn them into reality.

Schrebergarten: Making the first garden

[Schrebergarten posts]

The paint + sand mix and fences I installed last weekend need more green around them. I started off with some vegetables: Lollo Rosso salad and Kohlrabi from the Busch Nr. 1222 vegetable kit. The planting beds are real sifted dirt from our backyard.

I made a small patio from an Evergreen styrene sheet, added a lawn, and bushes along the fence. The bushes are dark Woodland Scenics clumps topped with Scenic Express SuperTurf. In this photo the lawn is still drowning in glue...

Next I added JTT sun flowers and a path from fine Woodland Scenics ballast. I also glued in some Noch greens and flowers. The flower bushes are overscale for HO, but look reasonable when glued tight together so that it's not quite as obvious how high the supporting fibers are.

Moving on to the Zucchini from the Busch  Nr. 1222 vegetable kit. The plants look great when done, but getting there is a bit painful.

First, paint the zucchini on the sprue. I made them a different green than the sprue and added a hint of yellow. Once the paint has dried it's time to glue the zucchini flowers to the stalk.

I left the flowers on the sprue, and only cut them loose on one side. First glue the stalk to one flower, and cut off the other side of the flower from the sprue. Repeat for the other flower(s). It seems weird at first, but this way it's easy to ensure the tiny flowers go on the stalk instead of your fingers, tweezers, the floor, or you-don't-know-where-else.

The finished plant looks very nice, and almost in scale. I built and planted the plants one at a time, which was probably the most drawn out part of the day.

Schrebergarten: Fences

[Schrebergarten posts]

Garden spots are small and of course fenced off. You certainly don't want kids to run across nearby tracks. Another Noch kit provided the fences. When convenient I glued the various pieces together with plastic glue, and mounted them on the baseboard using regular white glue.

Just before dinner, I ran out of fence to install, but you get an idea of how the two garden plots are laid out. Garden plants and greenery is next.

Schrebergarten: Sheds

[Schrebergarten posts]

I had planned the garden spots in Talheim for a while, so I've been collecting various supplies for them over time. One of these is Noch's garden sheds kit. This is a set of small sheds made from laser-cut cardboard. I intend to use the two small sheds, but ended up building all three.

The kit comes with the appropriate glue, so there is no guesswork involved on that front. Putting it together is as easy as one might think (how hard could this possibly be?), and the resulting sheds are surprisingly sturdy.

Shed 1 was put together in no time and is a cute little building. The roof is made from rather thin cardboard. I'll need to take some care when working around these little sheds.

Shed 2 is slightly more involved, but came together quickly as well.

I messed up the wall angles a bit when gluing one side of Shed 3, but noticed it only when reviewing the finished building and wondered where that gap came from. So, as it turns out, while it is an easy kit to build, you still need to pay attention. I forgot to take a photo of Shed 3. Maybe some other day.

I need fences.

Schrebergaerten in Talheim

[Schrebergarten posts]

The area between the Koef shed and the mainline in Talheim has an odd shape. In real life the prototype would allow creation of "Schrebergaerten" (garden spots) on such unusable property along the tracks. I can do the same.

In order to build the gardens off the layout, I cut a base piece from poster board.

I painted the board my standard earth brown, sifted fine sand into the wet paint, and left the board alone to dry, while working on something else.

 

A couple hours later, I returned to the board and ... well, that didn't work. The poster board had warped and the paper cover came off.

On the second try I used insulation board as the base, painted it, sifted sand, and left it to dry.

Time for some sheds.