Creating a scenery base

As I mention in one of my posts, I have very little experience (almost none) with building scenery. So I was more than a tad surprised to see a favourable comment on my efforts so far, along with a question on whether I have any tips to impart. My initial response was to say "Sorry, but I'm just trying to copy what 'the experts' tell us to do in countless articles and YouTube videos."

But then I got to thinking about it. Yes, I am a novice. But I'm no longer a complete novice, and I have started to develop my own preferred approach. So in the interests of documenting what I've found to date, and in the hope that my comments might assist someone else who is starting out from scratch as I did, here goes.

The following photo shows an area that I'm working on at present. The paint pots are sitting where the Southern Rock Asphalt quarry's crusher plant will be located. The gap between the rear-most tracks is where the Dougherty depot will sit.

This leads to my first tip (which is probably only of value if you live in Australia) - these paint pots are British Paints 500ml sample pots, which I got from Bunnings for about $8 each (from memory). I bought several pots in various shades of grey and earth tones.

The track shown in the photo sits on 3mm cork sheet. Before starting the scenery I trimmed the edge of the cork to about a 60 degree slope, to make it look like the track bed has been raised up above the natural ground level. Then I carefully painted the cork between the track with tan paint, and sprinkled on fine stone dust that I got from sifting Lilydale Toppings (crushed limestone).

Second tip - a bucket of crushed stone material such as Lilydale Toppings can provide a lot of great ground cover material. Spead it on a baking tray, and then bake it in the oven to dry it, and kill off any bugs it contains. Then pass it through sieves (I use tea and food strainers) to get various grades. The stuff I'm using even produces some light grey dust that is almost like talc powder. Actually, this tip comes from my friend Rod, who uses crushed stone to great effect on his Santa Fe Southern Division layout.

The area on either side of the cork/track was just the proverbial plywood plains (ie very flat). As everyone knows, even flat land usually has some undulations, and bare ply does not impart that look. To give the ply some undulations on the aisle side, I spread on a layer or two of plaster-soaked paper towel. Before laying the towel, I used a brush to wet the plywood with water and detergent in the hope that the plaster will bond better with the ply. It seems to have worked. At the back of the tracks I've done the same thing, except that I used plaster gauze instead. I bought the gauze on eBay, and it is far quicker and much less messy to work with than paper towel. On the downside though, it is much more expensive.

When the plaster is almost dry I brush on a soupy mix of grout, to provide a textured surface for the following layers to adhere to. I then let this dry for a day or so.

That's it for the base upon which the scenery will be built up. I'll be back soon with a follow up on adding the grass, etc. Thanks for looking.

Regards,
Ron