With the track, turnouts, and electrical work complete, I am looking at a slab of pink foam with track on it. Running trains on it is fun, but it all definitely looks unfinished. So... scenery. This includes everything from track ballast to foliage to structures to vehicles and people.

But first, there are a couple of things that needed to be done along the way that I did not discuss in the other pages. One of these is the trestle abutments. The trestles hold themselves up just fine, but in real life there would be some abutments at either end, constructed of stone or concrete or something. Since these had to fit in place, I elected to cast them in place using Lightweight Hydrocal, truly a remarkable product, in a mold. I built a mold of Lego bricks, which would leave an impression of large (scale) blocks of concrete. I was careful to arrange the Lego bricks so that the impression would be of blocks 10 mm wide by 8 mm tall. I also learned that it is a good idea to put some release compound, like Dow Corning 7, on the bricks to make removal easy.

Poured in the Lightweight Hydrocal, let it set, peeled away the formwork, and voilá!

I cast four of these, and later treated them with concrete colored pigment. I am quite pleased with how they turned out. They will be blended in with the rest of the scenery once that time comes.

Another crossing, where the outer loop of the railway crosses a road, was constructed by modifying a plaster bridge kit that I think came from Woodland Scenics. I shortened it a bit, and cut the walls to fit the shaped foam where the road pavement would go. The flex track ties rest directly on the top of the viaduct. This also was colored with concrete pigment, and the roadbed was added later.

One plastic structure had to be emplaced as part of the track: the roundhouse. This 3-stall roundhouse allows the rails of flex track to be slipped into the floor. All that is needed is to cut the track to length, so that it runs from the lip of the turntable to the back of the roundhouse, then remove the ties in the roundhouse section.

The next hurdle was to determine exactly where the roads should be, based on my rough drawings in Sharpie on foam. Or, at a minimum, where all crossings of roads over track would be. This had to be done before I could proceed with ballasting, since the ballast does not cover the roads. This is a case of where I had to determine the correct order of operations on the fly. I did not require all the pavement to be located—parking lots and such could wait—but I had to get the crossings in.

This meant that it was time to figure out what the roads would be made of. There are several commercial products for this, but in the end, I chose something completely different: heavy black gasket paper from the auto parts store. It comes in a roll about 8 inches (200 mm) wide and about 36 in (914 mm) long. It took awhile to let the material relax into approximate flatness, but it is easy to cut, and I think it looks fine. You can see a bit of it at a crossing in the previous photo.

Working with this requies that the base be built up to match the grade of the top of the railroad ties, which I did using Sculptamold, a super-fine papier maché. The gasket "asphalt" was then glued down with regular white glue. Here's a view of the viaduct and the adjacent crossing.

The road striping is done with yellow and white Krylon paint pens. The paints soak into the gasket material, producing the weathered look that I was going for.

The intermodal yard used the full width of the gasket material, which was cut to fit neatly between the rails, directly on the flex track ties, leaving just enough room for the wheel rims to pass.

With the main roads and rail crossings in place, it was time for ballasting. There are many techniques that modelers use with apparent success, and I'm sure that many folks have their favorites. After a lot of practice and experimentation, here is the method I came up with:

Step 1 is to apply the dry ballast to the track. I used Woodland Scenics fine ballast. I had two containers, both called "gray" with the same order number, but the colors were different, so I mixed them together. This mimics what is seen in the real world, where no attention at all is paid to ballast color. Some tracks get pretty colorful. I apply the ballast by pouring out a regular long pile between the tracks, using a laundry detergent cup.

Next I use a very soft-bristled toothbruch to smooth the ballast and make sure that it lies nicely between the ties. Not perfect yet—just good.

The same technique is applied to put ballast outside the rails. The amount will vary with the surrounding landscape, but for now I just want it to sit nicely over the cork to cover it.

Again, the soft toothbrush works to get it laid down right.

I used a pick to get rid of stray bits of the ballast sitting on top of ties. In the real world there is often ballast on the ties, so I am not getting every last piece.

Now, with a gentle spray from a bottle (so as not to disturb the particles and mess up my careful work), I wet it down with a mixture of about 50% water, 45% white glue, and 5% of isopropyl alcohol (the 70% strength stuff). This wets the ballast so that it can accept more glue.

And more glue comes! This is a mix of 50% water and 50% white glue, with just a few drops of alcohol. Here it goes between the rails, using enough to soak down in.

Outside the rails, one must be careful not to apply so much liquid that it moves the ballast itself. I have found it much better to make several passes using just a bit of glue and letting it settle between passes.

This dries overnight. Don't mess with it while it is damp or you will have a right mess on your hands.

After it dried, I went back and worked on the turnouts that inevitably get stuck with the glue. I worked on this a lot, but am still not satisfied with their operation. I am hoping that stiffer switch machine wires will be more persuasive.

And here is a nice view of the yard, all ballasted. Some rather large areas had to be covered here and at the roundhouse, but fortunately I had plenty of material to work with and a bit leftover for future repairs. Of course, if I need to use another color, it's all in the prototype!

Now with the ballsting complete, it is time to turn attention back to the paved areas. This of course required that I know exactly where buildings are, so I had to build all the building kits first and locate them exactly on the layout. I'll come back to the structures in a bit.

But, of course, not so fast! The placement of buildings depends on the roads layout, and on other thigns like sidewalks and parking lots. So I really need to figure it all out together.

I had already decided to use the heavy black gasket paper to represent asphalt. What should I use for sidewalks and other concrete pavement? I looked closely at some commercially-available options, but they were all too constraining. I was going to need custom sizes in a lot of places on the layout. And besides, their crack patterns were unnatural for concrete, which has specific modes of failure by cracking. I needed something else.

On a trip to my friendly neighborhood craft store (shout out to Village Arts in Los Alamos!) I noticed a freebie bin of framing mat material. Village Arts is also a framing shop, and they had mat cutouts in a variety of colors, thicknesses, and textures. What I was after was plain white mat board about 1 to 1.5 mm (0.04 to 0.06") thick. They had several pieces, some even with a nice 45° bevel on the edge. Score!

I experimented with the stuff, and found that the best method for converting framing mat to scale concrete slabs is to mark and cut out the pieces, which I did with a heavy Exacto knife making several passes. I used the knife again to then score the cut pieces to represent sidewalk and other pavement slabs within the piece. Sidewalks I made 1.2 m (4 ft) scale width, with the same size for length of slabs. I accounted for and scored in curbing, too. In addition, there are many stoops and door pads, and larger areas like the gas station. I finally added cracks with a wobbly knife. The mat materials works splendidly! I had plenty to make more pieces for testing.

Here I have laid out the sidewalks at the south end of town. It turns out that their exact positioning all depends on the location of the entrance to the tunnel to the park train.

I also experimented with various finishing techniques. The one I settled on is to use first a dilute wash of Woodland Scenics Earth Colors tint liquid, Concrete color, with just a drop or two of gray acrylic paint. Try it on those test pieces first to get the dilution right. I found that the color tended to be drawn to the edges, providing a very cool effect that you might see in concrete in the wild. After that dried, I washed the pieces again with a very dilute solution of black acrylic in isopropyl alcohol. Very dilute. This brought out the seams and cracks wonderfully.

The photo below shows a sample of sidewalk, laid next to asphalt and adjacent to the mask showing the position of a building. It also shows the results of treatment I did to the asphalt.

Here is better detail of the sidealk:

The asphalt, as I said before, is made from heavy black make-your-own gasket paper from the hardware store. As it is, it is pretty good, but I wanted to do more. You can see lines in yellow and white that I added with Krylon paint pens. I added the lines before adding some matte medium, since the bare paper really soaked up the paint and made it look old and weathered. I used some black acylic paint to mimic and street repair, with newer pavement across the right of way as for a water line replacement. I also had fun with the detail that the lane striping went over the manhole cover, which was later opened and emplaced with no regard for the striping. I see this in real life all the time.

I chose structures based on several criteria. First, there are those with a personal history. The principal buildings making up the farm, which is still only in the early planning stages, were built by my older brother Rob in the 1960s, and were, along with a train station and a water tank, the only structures that we had back in the days of laying copper track out temporarily on the floor until our parents had had enough for awhile.

Then there are the necessary train things that would simply have to be included somehow, like a train station and the roundhouse. The roundhouse had to be installed long ago as part of the track laying effort, since the rails run through it. The aforementioned train station simply had no place to fit, so I looked for the smallest station footprint that I could find, and found a lovely little laser-cut wood kit of Cullen Station, by American Model Builders. That fits just fine in the limited space where I am forced to locate the station, on the inner loop. Since it is in the part of the layout closer to the edge, the work on getting this fixed into place, like the farm, must wait until the "interior" part of the layout is completed. Here it is mocked up in its place:

Another building that I picked up along the way is the lumberyard. This kit was rather sloppily assembled by some eager modeler, but I managed to correct the flaws, and even enhance it with a proper loading dock made from stained balsa. I changed the name to SYLVAN SILVER FOREST PRODUCTS. "Sylvan" in reference to the forest, and "Silver" to extractable resources; in this case, lumber. I also have come to enjoy history of a now defunct "local" railroad, the Denver and Rio Grande Western, and have been collecting its locos and rolling stock. A big part of what built the D&RGW, and the reason its colors are aspen yellow and silver, was the transport of forest products (timber) and silver, especially across southern Colorado. The lumber yard is surrounded by store-bought stately evergreens:

The "downtown" structures also include a gas station (with an extensive concrete pad), a VW garage, a hardware store, and diner, and a hamburger stand. At right in the photo is a green space that will be a playground, in association with the train park, out of shot. More on that later.

At the top of the above photo is the small office building for the intermodal yard. This got some special treatment with the addition of a concrete ditch behind, with a little footbridge over to the intermodal yard:

And here is the intermodal yard proper:

One other piece of personal HO history that I wanted to preserve is the original train that I used to play with: a circa 1960 Gilbert 4-6-4 steam engine that still runs. I liked the idea of putting it in a place of honor, on display for the town, with an accompanying train shed. The track that it sits on is also connected to the larger layout, so it can go for excursions easily.

Here is the completed playground, consisting of a random kit of cast metal pieces that I picked up somewhere. The grass is a bit of Woodland Scenics grass mat, which comes in a roll. I took a pencil eraser to it to make the paths that people would have worn into the nice grass.

The train shed is adjacent to the playground, and this park includes another unique feature: I built (what appears to be) an underground passage from the Train Park to the Park Train, passing under the entire yard. The Park Train at the other end is integrated into the layout control panel. Here is the entrance to that tunnel at the Train Park end, leading to the Park Train. I had to dig a hole into the foam base to accommodate the stairs.

At the other end, of course, is the Park Train, where HO scale people can ride. This required cutting a hole through the aluminum plate that hosts the control panel, which was one of those moments where you know that what you are about to do could result in a disaster if you don't get it right. I had many of those moments making this layout.

The two tunnel entrances are aligned to promote the illusion that they are connected below. This is the layout's control panel, and the 1:900 scale Tiny Train that is there does not go anywhere. I will add a scratch built ticket booth some day. I tried a different technique on the concrete for this piece -- not sure why. This is the mat paper cut to fit and scored, then treated with a thin wash of black weathering powder in alcohol. I like the other technique, used downtown, better, but since the two are not adjacent, this is not particularly jarring.

I had fun with this gas station. This was yet another Walthers Cornerstone kit, for Al's Victory Service. As you can see, Al's victory was getting out from under the thumb of Standard Oil and dumping their sign behind the garage, and making his own service station that is all clean and nice!

The hardware store and the restaurants are other Cornerstone kits, and were added primarily because they fit the space. The Import Motors facility, however, I got specifically to serve as a VW dealer and repair shop. One that hosts air-cooled VW shows in its parking lot periodically. Almost all vehicles on this layout are air-cooled VWs, since that is another passion of mine. (If you want to explore another rabbit hole, go to https://vw.tauxe.net). Note that even the double parked (of course!) UPS truck is a VW bus.

At this point, most of the interior space of the layout is covered with either asphalt, concrete, or buildings. But there is still pink foam poking out in between. Can't have that! But we need to back up to before the point that the buildings got attached to the surface...

Any exposed pink foam got hit with an "Earth Color" tint, which came out sort of a greenish brown, as seen in some of these photos. OK, I guess that works. I outlined building edges with blue tape, and made a plan to add plants and rocks to the landscape. This starts at the bottom, with grass represented by finely-ground foam in the flat areas and rocks in the ditches. These are attached to the surface after applying either white glue or matte medium, prinkling the ground foam on top.

I also added a few culverts in key spots, since the civil engineer in me could not abide an unrealistic hydrology. Here's a culvert peeking out from under a road crossing, cut from a bit of plastic tubing I found on the street in an industrial part of our town.

Then I started building up, adding grasses and shrubbery. I am not completely pleased with the results, but did learn not to mix everything in everywhere. It is more realistic to have a bunch of grasses of the same color together, and to have each shrubbery be of a single color, instead of all shrubberies being the same mixed colors.

And, finally, trees. I have some great natural twigs to use as armatures for trees, once I get to making those. I can tell already this will be difficult, and I don't have the technique down, yet. But I had bought some commercially-available trees to play with, and I decided to use those for the town. Along the main drag there are several trees of a similar type, varying in hight and width. They look like nicely maintained deciduous trees that keep the downtown looking tidy. Here are the ones outside the White Castle burger joint, which was built by my daughter Zoë.

Down at the lumber yard, I opted for evergreens, since that is more in line with that business. See the photo above of Sylvan Silver Forest Products.

That completes the bulk of the scenery for the interior of the layout. With that done, I can return to tuning up the switch machines, discussed more in the turnouts section.

There will be, of course, more structures closer to the edge of the layout, but completion will be at a later time. These include details on the roundhouse, the farm buildings, some details around the steam engine shed including a memorial and historical marker.

More scenic details that do not incorporate stuctures per se are a campground (think US Forest Service), maybe a hobo camp, a partly burned forest, a geology field camp visiting an outcrop, and a hazardous waste cleanup operation behind the roundhouse, where Buddy used to dump the nasties above the creek. That one will be fun!

This space will be updated as scenery work continues.