Scenery: Backdrop trees

 On AIR 1 I used puff ball trees. I used the most common recipe, take a small ball of fiber, spray it with cheap green spray paint, then dunk it in Forest Green ground foam. Then I take some large scissors and  cut each puff ball in half. I spray 3-M’s 77 spray adhesive on the landform, and glue the half puffballs to that, crowding them together a little to leave no gaps.

I was recently at Jeff Mutter’s Erie Lackawanna layout, after a long COVID delay, and paid particular attention to his backdrop scenery.

One thing I noticed was benchwork depth. His scenes are 12-16 inches deep, and since I am planning a great deal of 12” or LESS scenery, I wanted to see how that plays. I felt, from my subjective point of view, it looked GREAT. Another aspect was the angle of the backdrop, how far did it slope away from the track. 

The angle of slope can cost a great deal of space, on AIR 2 my standard was to place the foot of the backdrop at six inches out from the wall and slope back to “ZERO” where the backdrop hits the supporting wall. Often this point of attachment was made directly to the bottom frame of the upper deck.

This created a “tent” behind which I could have been able to hide more staging tracks if I had been so inclined, but often when that idea arose, the scenery base was already well establish and I did not want to do a lot of demo.

In any case on Jeff’s layout his backdrop is vertical of near vertical, and to be honest, again looks good. In areas where staging tracks need to be hidden, I will have to build a lane into the scenery, but with the near vertical scenery more layout depth will be available for track and industry, and overall layout benchwork depth can be reduced. Using this as a yard stick benchwork depth  from AIR 1 that was 16” deep May now be 10” deep, the extra six inches can go into aisle width of against widening out of other areas, in parallel aisles.

Jeff does NOT use puff ball scenery, instead he used foliage clusters closely packed, his backdrops are upholstered with Woodland Scenics forest green foliage clusters. It is VERY effective, and where my trees might be too big, depending on how lazy I get rolling the poly fibre balls, his are possibly to small. I did not find them detracting, and possibly added to a sense of depth to each scene. 

I might seriously consider doing this where backdrop mountains overlap to creat a “canyon” where staging tracks are located, the true backdrop wall could have poly fibre trees declining in size until they mesh with foliage cluster trees creating a “Forced Perspective”, until the backdrop behind the screening wall of hills is foliage clusters totally, anyone looking down the canyon from the angle would see foliage, a green wall is a green wall. I cannot tell you how many times I have used that for background scenery at work!*

On Gary Siegel’s, Gary used dried flowers tied together into small armatures, this is less a tree shaped armature and more a small, tall thin “broom”. The dried flowers stems are a tan-ish color, this creates the trunk, then the broom part is sprayed VERY liberally with LN’s official green spray paint, the very cheapest green paint on sale at the nearest big box store that has enough cases of forest green $1.98 per can paint available, then the sopping wet armature is dunked into woodland Scenics forest green ground foam.  I personally have, on several occasions, joined in tree making parties at Gary’s, making trees for at least four hours at a stretch, then lunch, and then another four hours of trees. 

I have run Gary out of ground foam at times. Maybe these marathon sessions were why I never made enough trees on my own layout! You need to set a pace, make one hundred trees per night, then stop, then do it again the next night, every night until you have the backdrop forested. Gary’s layout is visually STUNNING, I simply cannot describe it any other way. I was a regular operator there from 1995 until 2003-4, and I mean I drove the 90 miles one way, several times each month, to operate, make trees, do layout maintenance, I built cars at home for him, once Ninety 70 Ton Coal Hoppers with different numbers at one sitting! My wife was not happy with the assembly line on our dining room table!

Each car decal-ed and weathered, trucks, kadee couplers, and wheels. That fleet is still running the wheels off. 

But I digress, AGAIN…

Each time I have walked through that door and take the first look at his layout, it literally takes my breath away! I know his layout has been featured in Model Railroader, I’ve seen photos of his layout in several L&N historical magazines, and I believe he has been a featured layout in Great Model Railroads**,  as well as hosting Pro Rail at least twice.

His backdrop is beautiful, and he considered it only half done!, when he simply stopped working on the H.O. Layout and began working on the G-Scale out door layout. He said he never got the foreground trees done. I saw examples, unbelievable! His layout must have well over 600 linear feet, and it is all sceniced except for a few feet near the very north end.

I have seriously considered his trees for my layout but I thought the puff balls were easier, and effective. I’m far lazier! Maybe a combination of both types. His trees need holes to be planted into. On AIR2 I plan using foam insulation as a backdrop base so planting these trees will be easier, another thing I learned at Gary’s. 

We’ll see. I should mock up some backdrop’s to see.

What are you using for your backdrop scenery? I chose to stay mid summer, like most layouts, so the entire layout is dark forest green. Are you modeling different foliage colors? Fall is getting popular, but I’m definitely not brave enough to try that.

Let me know what you’re doing, I’m always looking for new tricks!

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* my work, someday I’ll discuss it.

** I have operated on a couple of “Great Model Railroads” railroads and to be honest I have been less than impressed. There was one, that the owner specifically stated that his intention at the out-set was to get his layout into that magazine and that was all. He did in fact accomplish that and he then tore it down, sold off everything, and got out of the hobby. His trains simply would not stay on the track, a fact which he did not care about. You could not pull out of a yard and proceed on straight rail for more than a train length with out at least one derailment, usually more. Now I stress function far more that form,  which IS a problem with my layout, I care much more about how it works than how it looks, but this layout I’m talking about was simply there to look at AND photograph (The layout owner/builder was a photographer). After this, and a couple others, all featured in that magazine, Great Model Railroads, I stopped reading it.