Louisiana Bayous

Ok, maybe not a bayou, maybe more like a bog...

As I continue working on the layout I find it changing a lot more than I had originally anticipated, but this is a good thing.  

Recently while working on the highway crossing at Ruston and getting the scenery roughed in, I started thinking about having something different than typical forested areas.  In this case to the right side of the highway behind the tracks the scenery begins to rise up to some low lying hills that I installed so I could have the farm scene above track level.  To the left of the highway behind the tracks, I'm planning to leave it a somewhat flat, wooded area.  To the right of the highway in front of the tracks I wanted a county road that leads to the Ruston depot and parking lot where I can unload hoppers of Lime for the local farmers.

That left the remaining front corner to the left of the highway.  My first thought was to dig out the ceiling tile and foam to make a depression that was lower than the other areas which would help define a natural transformation to the low hills.  This sounded good.

As I thought about more, I thought it might be a good place to put a low bridge or even a culvert, but both would mean that I'd have to continue this behind the tracks and for reasons yet not discussed, this might not work well for what I have planned with the woods back there.

The other night while surfing the web, a video popped up from a modeler that I enjoy following.  He's made a lot of videos on his N scale Southern Alberta layout.  The one that popped up in my feed was how he made a marsh or wetland!  This would work and would fit into my local.

The other nice thing about this idea is it would serve double duty, similar to the way my Whitewater Creek scene did.  Not only did fit the local, but it also served as a scenic divider between Fordyce and Haskell.  I've also been planning to redo the tracks and shrinking the footprint of Dubach eventually.

Here's kind of what I have in mind.

In order to do this, I would need to remove a section of the ceiling tile, which is 5/8" thick and I then install a solid base, which for this I chose a section of 1/4" MDF.  This will give me a solid, flat surface that I can paint and then apply the sculptamold over that I'll use to form the edges and small exposed islands of the bog.

I cleaned off the area and quickly sketched out the bog.

Next I used several sheets of paper and taped them together to create a pattern and transferred to the MDF and cut it.  Then I laid the MDF on the area and traced around it and removed the ceiling tile.

After removing the ceiling tile, I glued the MDF in place.  This left the MDF about 3/8" below the ceiling tile.  

Before applying the Sculptamold, I'll need to paint the MDF with a deep dark blackish brown for the color of the bog water.  I'm also going to need to get the backdrop painted as well.