Trees And Stuff

Over the Labor Day weekend, I wanted to get a few projects completed in anticipation of Bruce coming over next weekend to work on the train. Trains are running fairly well on the mainlines but I think I need to do some serious cleaning once I get my Woodland Scenics track cleaning tool - hopefully tomorrow!
First thing Bruce and I will need are trees - and lots of them. After ordering a package of Woodland Scenic trees I was digging through my scenery drawer and discovered 2 (!!) packages of deciduous trees and one of ready to plant pines. Nice. Dumb that I forgot I had them, but nice. So I started making trees...

All the materials for making trees

...and I remembered that I hate making trees. There is always that feeling that I lack the creative, artistic skill to make realistic trees but its also messy and frustrating. Basically, twist the tree armatures (easy), cover the limbs with tacky white glue (messy but easy) and dip it in the bag of clump foliage. I always get a tree with one or two pieces of foliage, not where I want them, and have to press and preen to get it right. What you see in the photo is about 2 hours of work. Ugh! 

Bruce may have to make his own trees! 

Hillside in Uniontown with a couple of pines to start

I've been working on the mountain in Uniontown and I have some exciting ideas but I don't want to spoil them. Bruce has been working on the hill to the left of the photo which is in Herminie. I tried staining the rocks this weekend to get what I was hoping would be a sandstone/shale look. Nope. Gonna have to work on that.

Bridge pier and abutment weathered

I also weathered the new bridge abutment and pier using my typical "alcohol with a few drops of india ink" wash.At least that turned out pretty well.

PPG loading docks

Finally, I started building one of the two building flats in the Irwin yard. As you can see in the photo, I took a series of DPM walls, glued them together and used two-sided tape to hold it to the wall. It needs a little more work and weathering and I should be able to mount the Heinz building before the weekend.
Lots of fun!