Landscaping and getting plastered !

With all the bridge works completed the next job was to form the landscape.  I had a picture in my mind as to how I wanted the scene to look and also did a few rough sketches to work from. 
There are many ways of creating embankments and other scenic features but for such a small layout I find making card formers and then adding a lattice of woven card over them works well.
It's cheap, cheerful and rather fun, it's also green as well because you can recycle old cardboard though some might argue that it has been sent for landfill ! 

On viewing the following photo sequence you might think that it is a lot of work but I reckon it only took me 4 - 6 hours to do the lot.  Of course I didn't do it in one shot, just an hour here and there whilst I did other chores around the layout, house and garden !

Looking down from the road which has been both widened and realigned you can see the landscape formers in place.

The formers are just pieces of corrugated cardboard roughly cut to shape and glued in place with either a contact adhesive or hot glue gun.  The van is on one of the cassettes and once scenic detail has been added to the top of the embankment it should no longer be visible.

The milk tank serves to give you an idea of scale, the right hand embankment has a card lattice in place ready for a paper and plaster top layer.

The lattice for all the embankments is made from strips of cereal packaging which can be seen here being overlaid with layers of newspaper cut into triangular pieces.  They are cut to this shape as they more easily follow the contours of the formers without  creasing.  Each piece of paper is soaked in a plaster / PVA mix, I use Polyfilla  for this job which is mixed to the consistency of double cream, the PVA helps prevent cracking, so I am told ?  The pieces are carefully laid in place and brushed with more mix then more overlapping pieces added to build up a hard shell.

Here we are well and truly plastered !  The piece of hardboard strip will form a support for a stone wall which will run behind the creamery.

At the moment it looks like a cross between the white cliff's of Dover and a moonscape !  The rock face has been roughly moulded from Das modelling clay and will be further carved once hard. 

Finally here is the intended arrangement of the scenic detail.

The idea is for a line of overgrown hedges, bushes and long grass along the top of the near embankment to act as a view blocker for the cassettes and blend in with the embankment behind and backscene.  The old tree which stood beyond the road bridge will be refitted in the same place, (see the second photo) with some smaller saplings beside it.  The stone retaining wall will be of random stone with overgrown grass on top of it.  In front of the creamery building will be another area of unkempt long grass. 

Almost forgot this one showing the goods yard, this will be the first section to be completed and then the layout will be more or less restored in this area.  I do however have a few surprises in store !

Having made the basic landforms it's now time to paint the surfaces in a ground colour and then seal everything before adding the scenic dressing of your choice.  All of this will be covered in the next installment.