Let the scenery begin!
While I am finishing up on Bill's Oil Yard I have started scenery. Already I made a mistake. I applied ballast to some track first then since this area is going to be a yard I decided to cover the grass mat with sand . I should have done it the other way around since the sand covers some of the ballast instead of the other way around.
I had some canisters of Woodland Scenics (WS) coarse brown ballast but knew they would not go far so I went to a building supply store and bought a couple of large canisters of roofing granules. They were brown but not the same shade as the WS stuff so I everything into a box and mixed it all up to even out the color. I spread the ballast with a Ballast King and by hand near turnouts. I tried both 90% alcohol and wet water as wetting agent for the glue; could not tell the difference so stuck with the cheaper wet water. I have a gallon of Scenic Express Matte Medium so am using this until it is gone then I will switch over to diluted Mod Podge Matte.
Work progresses on the yard. I figure to add yellow grass / tufts etc. between the tracks.
The second part of my scenery adventure concerns the incline off to the right of the above photo. It started out as a WS 2% incline. I then added plaster cloth. Once that dried I mixed up Sculptamold (easy to work with) and spread it over the plaster cloth to smooth things over. I had mixed in some acrylic tan paint with the Sculptamold but thought it too light. I bought some acrylic brown but that was too dark so I ended up mixing the tan and brown to tone down the brown color and using a brush dipped in water painted the Sculptamold.
The incline will be a grassy area so I will be starting with WS Green Blend first and go on from there.
