Bethungra layout – Ballasting and tree making
Experimenting with tree making has slowed me down a lot over
the last month or so. The first lot of
trees I installed, were those supplied by the Junee Broadway Museum, coming off
their original now dismantled layout. I have almost
exhausted this supply. Checking the
ebay lists for more was disappointing.
Whilst I did find some more of the 3cm size I used for the Bethungra
Hill, the bigger size for foreground
trees were far too expensive. However,
the size of the trees that I needed for the scenic forced perspective effect is
around 5cm high, and there was very limited selection of any tree type in this size, let
alone of gum trees
A small group of trees fairly typical of those on the south west slopes of NSW. |
Start of a windbreak. Juvenile trees planted after the 2006 Junee district fire are around 13 years old |
More trees in a sheep paddock |
This tree has a quite white bark, and an open canopy of leaves. It was the inspiration for my initial efforts |
The area around the Bethungra loop is open woodland, and
farming, and this is what I am trying to simulate with the tree planting for
the layout.
I am not a botanist, but eucalyptus trees (gum trees) are
not the same. Some of the varieties of
trees near Bethungra Loop are Yellow Box, Forest Red gum, Blakely’s Red gum,
Kurrajong, Ribbon gum, and Snow gum. Then
we have shrubs, like Cootamundra Wattle, and bottle brush. A combination of the above would be most
effective
I am not an expert when it comes to making trees. Australian Model Railway magazine has had a few articles over the years. (Check their on-line index for "trees"). If you are using real plants, the best looking gum trees are made out of dried sedum flower heads but these to me look mostly like alpine ash (Eucalyptus delegatenis), and besides being fairly large, probably not suitable for Bethungra. Seafoam (Heki) can also make some good trees, and there are a few great you-tube videos by Luke Towan on the subject. I was told that you can buy seafoam in Australia, but "out-of-stock" was all I found.
So after finding no suitable trees on ebay, my options were to make my own using the twisted wire method.
There were quite a number of "dead trees" in with the museum supply. I tried the Woodland scenics foliage on the dead trees to see if that would work. |
The Woodland Scenics foliage has an unfortunate characteristic, in that a lot of the foam in the fibre mesh is loose, and liable to fall out. To counter this, I spray each tree with cheap hair spray.
Ballasting.
Much has been written in the model press about
ballasting. Ballasting is not a without
risks, so I thought I would share some of my experience.
- Make sure the trains run properly before adding
ballast
- Adding ballast can create track problems due to expansion and contraction of the rails due to temperature changes
- Ballast can interfere with flangeways.
- Loose ballast can find its way into loco mechanisms
- Gluing the ballast will add noise to train running
- Poor gluing can cause points or switches to stop working.
- Some ballast contains unwanted impurities, which can promote corrosion
- Ballasting too early can make scenery work harder
- Adding ballast can create track problems due to expansion and contraction of the rails due to temperature changes
- Ballast can interfere with flangeways.
- Loose ballast can find its way into loco mechanisms
- Gluing the ballast will add noise to train running
- Poor gluing can cause points or switches to stop working.
- Some ballast contains unwanted impurities, which can promote corrosion
- Ballasting too early can make scenery work harder
A successful model railway can be made without ballasting,
but it is not finished without ballasting.
As our hands and tools are not scaled, most ballasting
techniques will need clear space. So,
before I plant any trees close to the tracks, I needed to ballast.
The area of track to be ballasted. Basic scenery has been completed |
The last thing I do before returning to the scenery, is to locate, and remove the track fixing pins. The ballast holds the track a lot better than the pins in any case. If you ever need to adjust the track, the last thing you need is to have a pin preventing it being moved.
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A lot has happened world wide since I wrote my last
Blog-post 3 weeks ago. The COVID-19
coronavirus will have a different impact on the lives of all people, and we are
all heading into the unknown. But it is
times like this when having such a great hobby as model railways, allows one,
for at least some time, to escape to an alternate world that you have made. In these troubling times, stay safe,
and hopefully, we will all come through this a lot wiser.