Good afternoon,
Hi Flo and Francine, I'll just have some coffee and a peace of whatever pie you might have. Ya, some hot apple sounds good!
I built myself a new work tray to go across two draws of my old desk became the smaller one I had been using was allowed too much stuff to either fall over the edge even with the half round molding as a border it just wasn't high enough. So the new one has a 1" border around it on three sides and about a 1/4" strip along the front edge. Also with more room I can now have some smaller box halves or trays to categorize things better for a neater work area.
Once I had completed this I then got busy fitting the painted and glazed windows for the Horseshoe Meadow Depot into place, and at around 5:00 Am this morning I finally had all but two small windows glued in place. The first large window fit into the opening perfectly, all of the other 9 plus the three doors needed to have the opening filed with a good brand of Diamond grit finger nail file and I still had 6 very small and 3 medium windows to go! As above I still have two of the very small windows to get fitted and both are going to take a fair amount of filing again but it sure looks good to at last see the doors and windows in place. I also still have two Brick Chimneys to install plus more ornate roof detail.
I also just made myself a loaf of bread, half wheat & white.
Curt - I like all the trees you got on your layout, are any of them home-grown? My layout will be needing trees too but I don't want to take out a second mortgage to buy them all from Scenic Express/Woodland Scenics or any of those new commercial treemaker-wannabees...
Hi Ken, Trees, are not too hard to make depending on what type your looking to plant on your layout. Some nice Pine's can can be made in several ways. If you want some nice foreground Pine trees you can get a some Basswood in various lengths and trim off the edges and add bark texture using a Hack Saw Blade an and taper it at the same time. The shavings can be used as ground cover too. Stain the tree trunks anything from a Driftwood shade to a Redwood color. Then get some Caspia from a craft store and Alien's Tacky glue, and nip off various lengths of the caspia branches and with a pin vise and drill bit of the appropriate size drill holes in various places to insert the various lengths of Caspia. [I have the Caspia with the little needle like growth sticking up, my preference. You can also spray these with cheap hair spray and then sprinkle on Woodland Scenics [WS] ground foam in anything from a light green to darker green and spray again.] Remember the lower branches will hang down and the midpoint will be sticking straight out and the upper wil be angled up toward the sky. Don't forget to ad a few dead branches below the lower live branches. These trees do take a little while to make a very realistic foreground tree. If you want a bunch of smaller ready made trunks get a box of the chopsticks you break apart and after trimming off a bit at the bottom you have a ready formed tree trunk of about 10".
If you want Oak trees, and have any growing locally that are fairly young, You can often, find new or fairly new, growth branches that are appropriate for HO scale and if cut across the branch in the middle of the bulge they can make a very realistic tree trunk and branches. Then with some WS net type stuff you can get some fairly nice looking trees. There are other plants also such as Nandeena for smaller types of young Oaks or other scenic trees.
Also, if you can anchor one end, the loop end of some fairly limber wire that can be twisted easily and lay various lengths of cut jute alone the length between the two wires and then get the two loose ends chucked up in a drill motor and while holding it taunt give it a quick pull of the triger and release it should twist the wire with the jute to form a Christmas tree style tree and you can trim as desired. You then can even cut the length of the jute here and there to form variations in growth length. Again these can also be sprayed with hair spray and sprinkle on some ground foam to suit yourself.
I guess WS or other source also has some small leaf type of material available to add a different effect to the Oaks etc.
Just some food for thought.
