Hedge rows & accomodation crossings

[Mayner]

I wanted something that looked a little bit more like an Irish hedge than a strip of foam rubber or pot scourer. I had a read of Barry Norman's Landscape Modelling and he recommended using pan scourer with Woodlands Scenics foliage net. Pan scourer did not work out but I had some rubberised-horsehair and it did the job nicely.

[BosKonay]

That looks fantastic John!

[Guest hidden-agenda]

I like this John very realistic looking and well worth the effort.

[scahalane]

very realistic, love the painted backdrop effect as well.

[Dave]

Wow, great tip. Looks very realistic.

[moogle]

Not a method I've seen before, thanks for sharing!

Love the gateway, very rustic.

[IrishModelRail]

Fantastic! Where did you get the rubberised horsehair?

[WRENNEIRE]

Rubber horse?

[Weshty]

Really nice job John. Reminds me of walking down the track to the Barna tunnel. Very, very irish looking.

[Mayner]

Really nice job John. Reminds me of walking down the track to the Barna tunnel. Very, very irish looking.

 

The layout slipped back into a bit of a hiatus, I am not sure if it was the winter blues or I hadn't figured out how to deal with the near side of the road. Between the combination of eye level viewing and scenery in the foreground its easy to block out the view of the trains and road vehicles on the tramway. The field boundary will be marked by a combination of low hedgerows and wire fencing,

 

3T on the Arigna Tramway or Tralee and Dingle

 

That combination of narrow country roads, wild hedges, distinctive farm gates and regional variation in landscape between different parts of the UK and Ireland is difficult for a modeller to capture and can make a layout or a model really stand out.

 

Mid-Wales, the Home Counties and the Yorkshire Dales are distinctly different in terms of their landscape, railways, architecture so why not take the same approach to an Irish layout.

[enniscorthyman]

Very nice John,great detail.

[David Holman]

Very nice indeed - love the roadside tramway concept.

Re the rubberised horsehair, in the absence of the proverbial runner horse, then industrial type floor scourer pads are a good substitute. As an ex teacher [& indeed headteacher], a chat with the caretaker produced an new circular pad, about 50cm in diameter, which I've been using for years. That said, the other varieties mentioned work just as well.

Barry's book is still a great standby, while more recent works by Tony Hill and Gordon Gravett bring things up to date and are well worth having.

[Mayner]

I got the horsehair along with some scatter material from International Models/Anita Décor at Warley about 10 years ago, and finally got around to using it unaware that its difficult to find.

 

I decided on a mixture of low hedging and post and wire fence in the foreground, so you can still see the road and the trains. I used Woodland Scenics "fine leaf foliage" a natural product glued on top of the horsehair to represent the hedging & applied some extra ground cover to disguise the gap between the fascia and the edge of the scenery.

 

The gate posts are stripwood painted with Humbrol acrylic paint, the post and wire fencing uses Slaters plastic posts and stripped down hook up wire. https://slatersplastikard.com/assets/pdfs/FencingFlyer.pdf. I will probably use the Slaters posts with plastic rodding rather than wire for fencing the line through the cutting around to the loco shed.

 

Not quite stockproof fence with typical Irish field gate.

 

A couple of railway enthusiast cars parked awaiting a photo of the afternoon mixed?

 

The Children of Lir? and a couple of ducks.

Swimming in "realistic water" nothing much for a swan or duck to eat or drink. I use 3x1" pine for the baseboard framing with the track and road on 12mm mdf, the framing is notched out locally in two places for the river/lake bed in 6mm mdf. The fascia covers up most of the skulduggery.

 

 

Ford Prefect waits at the town gates.

I finally got around to completing the roadway at the level crossing. I had put off this job for quite a while, the Bemo flexible track used is quite delicate and managed to pull one of the rails out of its fixings and I did not fancy replacing the panel back to the next joint on the station side of the crossing.

 

In the end the track was quickly repaired by soldering in a copper clad sleeper and I completed the roadway across the crossing with strip-wood sleepers stained to look like creosote. The roadway was then coated with pva and a dark Woodlands Scenics fine scatter coat sprinkled on, a cold version of tar and chips, this seems to have matched up nicely with the entrance to the goods yard and loading bank.

 

The p.w. gang is preparing to do some spot re-sleepering and swap out worn rail with sleepers and rail stored by the crossing, the County Council has still to provide footpaths and tar the road past the houses to the station.

 

I badly need some 1950s era signs for the buildings around the station area and tramway.

 

 

The crossing gates are from the Wills scenic series and fairly typical of CIE gates up to the boom era. The C&L level crossings were pretty inconsistent with targets and lamps, some had targets some had lamps.

 

This end of the layout still needs a little thought about hiding/disguising the hole in the backscene, Presently there is no room for expansion as this end of the layout projects into a window and across our cats' day bed.

Edited October 28, 2013 by Mayner

[Kirley]

Like your field gates, they set the scene so well.

[David Holman]

Very nice, though a further enhancement is described by Gordon Gravett which uses an electrostatic grass tool to put 6mm fibres on to the rubberised horsehair, then spray brown/grey, before then adding the fine crumb. The fibres are great for hawthorn, gorse or any thorny or fine branched hedging. Dead simple and very effective. Will put up some photos at the weekend.

[David Holman]

Here are a couple of pictures I promised, showing how the use of an electrostatic grass tool can enhance a rubberised horse hair hedge. The first is showing bare 6mm fibres, the second after a spray with beige paint. Good possibilities for a winter hedge methinks.