Landscaping
The eastern end of the layout, boards 8,9 and 10 had suffered the worst damage (see left) so I started rebuilding here. The old landscape was removed (or had fallen off!) and the boards cleaned and tidied up. I wanted to keep as much to Ralph's original plan as I could so I referred to some old photo's of the layout. The embankment either side of St James Park Halt continues all the way round until it meets the Howell road bridge on Board 1. Where I had to shorten the layout and trim the end board #9, the outer embankment which would have run into Longbrook street bridge, had to be truncated.
I decided to model a retaining wall as there is no width to do much else. This is a piece of hardboard covered in Brick wall patterned styrene and painted. Where the outer embankments starts, I built up a slope from wood offcuts, covered it with hardboard and added an end profile to match a similar one on board #8. This can just be seen at the left end of the next photograph.
I really don't like lightweight scenery as I invariably lean on it with disastrous consequences. Exeter centrals new landscape was made by screwing and gluing wood offcuts to the baseboard and covering with hardboard, rough side up. This was hacked to shape with a jigsaw and pinned in position on the offcuts (see Right). Any large gaps were filled with wood glue bits of hardboard.
The hardboard was then covered with Sculptamold, spread thickly and smoothed to the general contours required. This is a brilliant product for Model railway landscaping as it is very resistant to cracking, is light, tough, sticks well to wood and can be painted on directly or coated with a smooth filler.
This picture to the left shows sculptamold laid up against a stripwood edge to form a recess. The recess will hold a sheet of plywood to act as a base for the buildings which will eventually be built here.
When dry, the sculptamold was painted with a coat of reddish brown poster paint meant to represent the red earth of the Exeter area.
This picture shows the embankment finished with 'Woodlands Scenics' static grass - Harvest gold.
This was applied with a static applicator onto dilute PVA glue and finished off with some clumps of 'Woodland Scenics' Briar patch...I'm not so impressed with this but it's in place now so will have to stay.
That gets me to the stage of basic ground cover on those boards which needed significant rebuilding. Trains can now run through a more acceptable environment and I can take my time detailing the scenery as I want.
This picture shows the landscape painted with yet more poster colour but in greens greys and yellows all mixed together on the scenery. The reddish undercoat does affect the final colour although i'm not sure it's that pronounced. Whilst still wet, the painting was flecked with other colours blended in to vary the shades. The roughness of the sculptamold also assists in preventing that flat uniform look, so common on models.
