SCENERY CONSTRUCTION PHOTOS

Colorado & Western Railroad Co.

(C&W)

Southern Colorado Land Navigation & Transfer Co.

(SCLN&TC)

The scenery was built in sections.  Making the mountain and canyon forms with blue board foam insulation, then covering it all with plaster was a lot of work.  Consequently, I would take a break from this and work on individual scenes.

NOTE:

This scenery section will be ongoing for a long time.  As I make progress I will post more photos.

This is looking south at the bridge.  It’s now plastered in and some color added, but certainly not the final coloring.  The tightness of everything here made doing the plaster work very difficult.

The track is ballasted and some scenery done.  Despite all the work that still needs to be done, at this point in time I felt like I was finally getting somewhere.

This is just what I wanted; a tight river curving under the bridge where the tracks are taking different alignments.  Despite all the work, it makes me feel good when things come together like I visualized it.

Before beginning the plaster work and coloring I wrapped the trestle with plastic to protect it.

Before going any further I did the scenery around the trestle.  Keep in mind that this is certainly not the final scenery, but it gave me an idea of how it was going to look.

Satisfied with the initial trestle scenery. I made the surrounding area with plaster cloth.

First I put down a light covering of ground cover as a base for the scenery.

For all practical purposes the scene is finished, although I may go back and fine tune things a little, but no major changes.  A combination of natural materials and commercial items from Scenic Express were used for the scenery.  I make my own Aspen trees from raw materials that I get from Scenic Express.  They’re fragile, but really look good.

Chugwater Trestle in place with basic hard shell down.

Finished Chugwater Trestle

This is Phantom Curve and The Palisades.  The curve leads into Frisco Canyon.  Foreground scenery was made from plaster and the background scenery Bragdon Geodesic Resin.

This is the last of me working with plaster.  From here on with the scenery I changed to Bragdon Enterprises Geodesic Foam scenery—and have never looked back to using plaster.

This is the base hard shell for Tincup Mt. and Westcliffe area scenery.

First I color the rock outcroppings.  Next I paint everything else a medium brown as a base for my ground cover.

The basic ground cover is down, and I will fine-tune it as I keep working on it.

This is the west end of Westcliffe with trees in place.  Notice how I have the yard tracks buried in dirt and weeds.  I believe that’s a nice touch and I think it looks neat.  More fine-tuning will be done as I keep working on it.  I make my own Aspen tress and use tree kits from Timberline Scenery in Colorado for the Pine trees.  Ready-made tress runs into a lot of money when planting the number that I am.  I can put the flocking on them easy enough, but making the armatures is very time consuming for me.  Jim Wilde, owner of Timberline, realizes this, so he makes the armatures and includes flocking in whatever color the customer wants, and it works out very well.

I have been a student of real scenery for many years, and have actually photographed some areas for reference.  During the summer when everything is green it isn't all the same shade of green.  Grasses, weeds, and bushes have a wide variance of greens.  Then comes fall when things start changing color and once again not everything changes at the same time, so now we also have a wide variance of fall colors.  I'm modeling early fall because that's my favorite time of year, but it also gives me the challenge of different colors.  So I use a wide variation of textures and colors.  Whenever I'm working on a large area I don't do it all at once, and every morning when I'm having my coffee and a cigarette I sit there and study the scenery, then get back to work on it.

This is the east end of Westcliffe.  Again, the yard tracks are buried in dirt and weeds.  The weeds between the rails are Buffalo Grass (from Scenic Express).  These weeds are very flexible and will not foul rolling stock or locomotives.  The rock outcroppings are an extension of Tincup Mt.  Rather than blasting away rock for the yard tracks, the tracks were put in-between the rocks.  If you look closely at my photos you will see tree stumps here and there.  This was a heavily wooded area and some trees had to be cut down for the tracks.

Looking at the photos of the east end of Westcliffe, I used a darker green pine tree to give more contrast to the Aspens, and I believe it looks good.

This is the entire Westcliffe area, from left to right. It’s west to east in the photo.

This is the east end of Westcliffe at almost track level, with HO cars in the yard.  I made the Aspens.  In previous photos you could see several stands of Aspens I have on the layout.  Aspens grow in groups, or stands, and these groups can range from small to absolutely huge.  Once in a while one can find a single Aspen, but that's not the norm.  During the summer the Aspens kind of blend in with the green pines, but in the fall when they change to golden yellow they really contrast against the pine trees and put on quite a show of color.

This is the corner of the layout at Westcliffe.  The area outlined was dead flat plywood.  I cut a small piece of scrap foam hard shell, heated it with a heat gun, and formed it in place over a small piece of extruded foam insulation to create a very small hill.  I don't like dead flat scenery as it just doesn't look right, so there are very few dead flat areas of scenery on my layout. 

The same things can be said of flat ground.  Flat ground isn't really flat at all.  With the exception of ball fields there are always humps and dips, some slight and some more pronounced.  Where Anna and I watch CSX trains in Vincennes there is a large flat grassy area in front of us.  Well, it's not true flat and the grasses and weeds have a variation of greens, and also a variation of heights.

So here is my process of doing scenery, whether it's a small area (as shown in this photo) or a large area, I get the hard shell down first.  With Bragdon's foam hard shell, when it's put down flat it isn't true flat.  It has small bumps and dips in it, just like real scenery.  If I want a hill I put extruded foam under it, like I did in this photo.  Then I paint it a medium brown.  Next comes the dirt.  Okay, a few comments on dirt.  I use real rock or decomposed granite.  I sift this stuff down very fine, almost a powder, and that is what I use for dirt.  I have about 6 different shades that I work with.  In this photo I used 2 different colors, with the top of the small hill being lighter.  You just can't beat the real stuff for representing dirt, but real dirt doesn't work very well as it turns to mud when diluted white glue is applied and dries smooth and doesn't look right.  That's why I use rock powder.  Oil absorbent, such as NAPA, is also good for small rocks and even gravel, sifting it through several different size strainers to get different size rocks.  But I much prefer decomposed granite or real rock powder

Next comes any grass that I want in the area, and I use fine ground foam for this, and again, usually 2 different shades, although not all the time.  Next comes the smaller weeds, which is coarse ground foam.  I'll make a pile of this and pour diluted white glue into it and mix it around.  I put enough glue in it where it is wet.  As a rule I mix 2 different shades together, with one being the predominant color.  Then I spread it around at random.  Next comes larger bushes, which is clump foam, and I usually use 2 different shades of green.  When all this looks right I begin putting in my Buffalo Grass, which is tall weeds and very flexible, giving it a very realistic appearance--gosh I love this stuff.  I remember years ago when I had to make my own tall weeds and that was a lot of work, so this stuff is a blessing.  I also put in some Buffalo Grass that has flowering growth on it and I use both late summer and early fall, mostly the early fall as the colors stand out more.

The entire small area is now finished and I have my tress in, but nothing on top of the small hill as I wanted it bare.  The area outlined was the previous dead flat area.  Okay, my theory on planting trees.  Unless one is planting a bunch, such as Tincup Mt., I never plant in even numbers, it doesn't look right, so I always plant 3, 5, 7, etc., although when I go over 7 or 9 tress then it doesn't matter much about the even or odd number.

Now I’m “fine-tuning” the scenery.  If you look closely you can see pine tree seedlings.  I put quite a number of these in the Westcliffe area.

This is finished Tincup Mt. at the west end of Westcliffe.  The back side of the mountain is the south wall of Frisco Canyon.  The clock in the photo is my fast clock.

This is the entire area of Westcliffe, Tincup Mt. the north wall of Frisco Canyon, and The Palisades.

This is the hard shell for Tincup Mt. with the form for the north wall of Frisco Canyon in the background.  The lower corner rocks are in place.  There is a small removable section just this side of the Frisco Canyon north wall.  There is a small gap between the two for Trinchera River.

The Frisco Canyon wall is colored but ground cover is not in place yet.

For the most part this area is finished, although I will go back and fine-tune it a little.

Looking into the depths of Frisco Canyon from the east end.

Looking into Frisco Canyon at the west end.  Shown are Phantom Curve, The Palisades and the turnout at Frisco Canyon West.  The canyon continues on south to the edge of the layout, but this is where the rails come out of the canyon.

This view is from inside the U of the railroad.  From left to right is The Palisades, Tincup Mt. and the north side of Frisco Canyon at the rear.  If you look closely at the bottom left in the photo, you can see the track on Phantom Curve.

My large scenes are easily broken down into mini-scenes.  Shown here is a deep dip next to a yard track.  The dip, or hole, comes down from the rock out cropping.  At the bottom is standing water.  Notice the tree branch in the water and the weeds around the water.  In this photo is an HO car on the yard track and you can see how close the Buffalo Grass is to the car and in between the rails.  The coupler air hose easily goes through these weeds.

This mini-scene is at the bottom of Tincup Mt. and The Palisades and it has the dual purpose of allowing one’s arm to reach through the scenery to throw the turnout at Frisco Canyon West, as can be seen at the top of the photo.  With the removable sections of Frisco Canyon in place, this is the only access to the turnout throw.  Notice the tree stump where a tree was cut down, the fallen tree with its branches spread around, and the standing water (just about in the center of the photo.

This is Frisco Canyon East, with Tincup Mt. in the background and the beginning of Frisco Canyon in the foreground.  Notice the fallen tree at the top of the rocks and branches that have fallen down the rocks and lay next to the track.

This is at the same location as Mini Scene Photo 03 above.  Ties have been replaced on part of the curve.  You can easily see the new ties in place.  The arrows point to the stack of new ties used for the repair and the stack of used ties alongside the tracks.

This is the extruded foam mockup for Cumbres Hill.  As can be seen in this photo, the rocks for Cumbres Gap are in colored and in place.  The large piece of extruded foam in the foreground and the backboard will be contoured later.

This is the same area of Cumbres Hill from the opposite direction.  In this photo you can see the mockup for Rock Tunnel.  Cumbres Gap and Rock Tunnel were both inspired from actual scenes on the Cumbres & Toltec Railroad.

NOTE:

This scenery section will be ongoing for a long time.  As I make progress I will post more photos.

David A. Bontrager—Owner

Colorado & Western Railroad Co.

Southern Colorado Land Navigation & Transfer Co.