The Wyatt Rd. overpass

After getting the bridge roughed in and the road secured in place I made some guardrails out of small sections of Hardware Cloth and I soldered a section brass rod to the top and painted it all gray.

I planned to add a concrete erosion slab under the bridge but found a bag of WS tallus which I thought might be a little more era appropriate.

I weathered the bridge with Pan Pastels and with some instructional help from David Foxx, I added some grease and grime lines to the lanes of the road and bridge using black chalk. 

 

Next I started making some imitation Super Trees.  Since these would be in the background they didn't need to super detailed.  I started with some weed stalks that I had stashed away years ago.  I used WS Polyfiber and stretched it real thin and wrapped it around the stalks.  Sprayed it with cheap "Super Hold" hairspray to glue it to the stalks and to hold several shades of green WS fine ground foam to the polyfiber for color.

For some of the shorter shrubs I just stretched out the polyfiber and added the ground foam without the weed stalks. This is pretty much the same method I used for some SuperTrees I did a while back.  I also added in some WS coarse foliage to help fill in any gaps and for a variation.

I had made and used 15 trees and shrubs when I took this image.  I wound up making a dozen or so by the time I was done.  In another post I'll show how I made the imitation Super Trees.

 

I'm gonna stick a fork in it for now.  The last thing I need to do is to get the "Distant hills" painted on the backdrops as I've done elsewhere on the layout, until then I wanted to get an idea of the final scene so I took about 25 shots and photo stacked them and then edited in a stormy sky. 

The NB Winnfield local passes under the Wyatt Rd. overpass with less than a mile to go before it reaches Biddle Yard.  Hopefully the crew will get her tied down for the night before the late afternoon thunderstorm rolls in on them.  

I named the bridge after my friend Wyatt who suggested that this scene was begging for a bridge.  Thanks Wyatt!

The Yard has Hills

After getting some ground foam down around the yard tracks and the loop end, I decided to break up the overall flatness and add a couple of hills on the loop end of the yard.  Nothing too big, just a couple of bumps.

I also decided to add a backdrop on the far right end of the yard.  I think they'll compliment each other, plus it will help hide the shelving unit and other clutter for photos?

I started with a couple layers of pink foam.

I got it shaped and then covered it with paint and a base layer of ground foam, then started blending things together.  I also extended the ballast a few inches further.

Then a friend told me that that area was begging for a bridge, maybe an abandoned bridge?  After thinking about it, I thought it would be a great way to get a frontage road into the industrial I had planned for the middle of the yard.  So I dug around and found an old Rix bridge that I was planning to use on an old module years ago and started playing around with it to see if it would work.

Seeing that there was promise to the idea, I proceeded to work it into the scene.  A second friend told me to use pink foam for the abutment.  After getting one cut out, I covered it with a thin layer of  plaster, inserted it and glued it in place and test fit the bridge.  

 

I had to grind down the foam a bit to level things out for the road.  I also added a couple layers of cardboard to build it up even with the bridge and abutment so the road would line up.  I wound up with about 1/8" between the top of a double stack container and the bottom of the bridge.

After getting everything lined up and glued in place, I cut a piece of 1/16" gray craft foam for the actual road, glued it down and then used grout for the shoulder and then got the rest of the ground foam laid down.

Here's how it stands today. 

I plan to add some guardrails and either a concrete anti-erosion slab or just some rip rap below the abutment.  This whole area will be covered in trees when finished.

Grass in the yard

After getting the ballast and dirt in the yard, I started adding the ground foam base.

I used an Earth blend starting at the edge of the dirt and ballast and spread it outward, followed by fine burnt grass over top of that leaving a bit of the earth blend showing.  Then I came back over top of the burnt grass with a turf mix.

While this looks ok, I plan to come back and add a layer of static grass over all of this to give a look of tall weeds.  I also plan to glue down some shorter static grass within the yard, both between the tracks and hopefully between some of the rails in a random pattern. We'll see how this works out?

And for the fun of it, I roughly edited the last photo to give me an idea of the finished product.  The large brown area is reserved for and industrial line that will serve a string of large buildings similar to a downtown theme, someday...