I've been trying to make up my mind as to what to do next on the layout. There is landscaping to do, more cars to build, more vehicles to build, and more structures to build. I have several long weekends coming up, including a couple of 5-day breaks, so there's plenty of time, but I haven't decided what the priorities are. Taking a step back and looking things over, I decided landscaping should be next on the list. It seems like the logical next step - until it's finished I can't finish ballasting & weathering the track, I can't place structures on the layout, and the overall look of the layout is suffering without landscaping.
With that decision made, I proceeded to create my own brown snowstorm. If you've read my earlier posts on how I do my landscaping, you know that I use real, natural materials, including real dirt. I have a container full of dirt that has been baked in the oven and sifted to a fine powder. After slathering a layer of diluted white matte medium over the target area, I sprinkled a layer of this sifted dirt onto the matte medium. I followed this with a misting spray of "wet water" (50/50 mix of water and rubbing alcohol), thoroughly saturating the dirt. This helps the matte medium spread throughout the dirt. A second final layer of dirt was then sprinkle on top of the saturated material. Tomorrow, after this has had some time to set, I'll cover selected areas with the ground-up leaf mixture that I use.
Note to others who are planning shelf layouts - contemporary advice is to limit the shelf depth to 24 inches. I ignored this advice, and today came to regret it. Three hours hunched over trying to reach the back of a 3-foot deep shelf is too much, my back is killing me!
Enough rambling, let's get to the photos...
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