Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Ray Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Western R.R. (S.L.O.&W.) in HO
We'll get there sooner or later!
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
..... Bob
Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here. (Captain Kirk)
I reject your reality and substitute my own. (Adam Savage)
Resistance is not futile--it is voltage divided by current.
Modeling B&O- Chessie Bob K. www.ssmrc.org
I've been using drywall mud on dioramas and layouts for years. I think it works better than plasters because it doesn't dry in 5 mins. and you can work with it.
Once it's dry you can paint it or use Woodland Scenics approach and spray dyes or thinned paints on it to color and stain it to simulate rock faces or outcroppings or you can mix paint [acrylics or dyes] into the mud before you apply it.
If you want smooth, flat fields it's very easy to achieve them with drywall mud and a wooden roller, [just make sure the wife doesn't find out!! LOL], just apply a thin ,1\4 inch or so ,coat and roll it out. The results are very nice and it dries pretty fast.
At $12 for a 5 gal. bucket you'd be hard pressed to find a better deal, and if you need time to work in your contours and shape your landscape you can't beat drywall compound, plaster will dry so fast you won't have any time to work with it.
Folks:
In case anybody wants to know (nobody asked, true), drywall mud is basically clay, a vinyl polymer (I'm pretty sure it's the same one used to make hot glue sticks and some foam rubbers!) and fillers. It dries, and does not set up into "stone" like plaster. Some patching plasters are similar, made of glue and fillers. Others are just gypsum plaster with retarder added. To complicate things, there are also powdered setting-type joint compounds sold.
I have used premixed paste joint compound for mountains on screen wire. It's pleasant to work with, but stays soggy a much longer time than plaster. It's more resilient and rubbery when dry than plaster is.
I've often thought that joint compound could be used with paper towels in a revival of the old-fashioned texture-paint method -- texture paint was glue and fillers, and the properties seem similar. I haven't tried it yet.
Sure - it will work. It might crack if you make it too thick but I've put it over styrofoam. I use an old paint brush and jab it with the bristle's to add texture. You can use a damp sponge to smooth it. When its dry just paint it with some latex earth or rock colored paint.
Duncan