Clyde Model Railway Club - Building Trees

BUILDING TREES

Trees can add to the appearance of almost any model railway layout, from single track rural branches to the dense trackwork of a city center terminus. Trees can grow in any small gap of land that is left undisturbed. Sometimes they have plenty of room to grow and can become huge, but in other locations the species can be a small one, or the roots restricted either in space or nourishment and the tree can be quite stunted. Here we show how to create trees for your layout.

The Woodland Scenic tree armatures.

These trees were built using the Woodland Scienics tree kits. Firstly the armatures were separated from the sprues, bent into a tree shape (they come flat for packaging reasons) and painted firstly with Halfords grey primer, before painting them with 'sleeper grime' using a Railmatch can.

Foliage added.

The next stage on the trees (after leaving to dry) was to attached the foliage. The kits come with foliage clumps and a type of wire foliage. I opted to use the clumps and broke up the clumps, before spreading on some newspaper. I then spread impact adhesive onto the end of the branches before spearing them down into the clumps.

A row of drying trees.

After making sure that all the branches were covered, I mounted the 'trucks' on a piece of wood (that I had pre-drilled earlier) and left to dry. All that was left was shake off any excess before attaching small pieces of the clumps to any bare parts.

A little spray with Display Mount was done to help keep the foliage in place.

Mounting the trees in a realistic setting.

The last stage was to mount the trees on Cardwell using more of the impact adhesive.

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