Trees

[traindaddy1]

Well, here we go!  Decided to add trees (lots of them) to our "O" scale layout.....Wow, $$$$$.

Need suggestions or 'leads' for economical items. As always, many thanks.

[MisterBeasley]

Look for "natural" armatures in your yard or in wooded areas.  I use seedum from my wife's flower garden (harvested in the fall after it dies) and pampas grass, which grows wild near wetlands up here in New England.  I like the Noch foliage packets for leaves.  I took a piece of pink foam and made a cover for a shaker bottle.  I put some foliage flakes into the bottle, sprayed the armature with hair spray, poked the trunk end into the foam, put the tree end into the shaker and gave it a shake.

The leafy, light green trees are pampas grass with foliage added.  Total cost is probably a few cents a tree.  I cut these down for HO scale.  The tall spindly trees in this picture with the clumped foliage at the top are seedum:

I just dried these out, spray-painted them dark green and then brush-painted the trunks gray with acrylic craft paint.  In both pictures, the clumpy trees are Woodland Scenincs.

Our local A.C. Moore craft store sometimes has Woodland Scenics trees.  They are overpriced, but if you go online to www.acmoore.com, you can download a coupon for 40 or 50% off any one item.

[selector]

You can make nice pines or firs using 1/4" -1/2" wooden dowels, the 3' lengths you can find at any hardware store, and cut them to size for length.  Use a hacksaw to scrape grooves vertically up and down the sides of the dowel to simulate bark.  Slip shaped disks of wooden fiber furnace filter, the turquoise ones available at Wally's, over the new armatures.  Spray the whole greyish brown, and then spray tacky glue over the disks, sprinkle with flocking or fine grass of the Woodland Scenics kind. 

If you have access to sagebrush, you will find no better natural armatures in my opinion.  Spread wispy pillow stuffing polyfiber thinly around the branches, spray glue, and flock again.

Doing 8 to 10 at a time takes close to an hour, more if you are more deliberate and fussy about the product.  You can make a board with dowel diameter holes drilled in it to hold the armatures upright while you spray and glue and flock.  Use light pine or even 1.5" extruded foam.

Crandell

[BATMAN]

One thing I do to get that tapered look is sit on the back patio with a cold beer and I put dowels in the drill and with some course sand paper I end up with these. With a little practice you can even get the top so thin it flops over like a hemlock.

This dead tree is six different gauges of wire put in the drill chuck and wound up to make the trunk. I then dipped it in some very runny plaster of paris a couple of times and painted it.

I have made furnace filter trees and like them a lot. These definitely get better with practice. Just look out the back window or at photo's of the prototypes while making them and that helps a lot.

The tree on the far right behind the house on the right is about 140' tall. Look at the house and then imagine a boxcar in front of the house. Make sure your trees are big enough. I find RR modelers tend to make their trees much to small when compared to the real world. At first proper sized trees look way too big on a layout. But once you stand back and and take a good look, it looks very real.

Just my

 

                                                               Brent

[traindaddy1]

Mr. Beasley, Crandell, Brent:      Thanks for the ideas and photos.  Certainly "Food For Thought"  Thank you.

[CTValleyRR]

Traindaddy,

Let us not forget the humble puff ball tree.  No, you will not make great looking foreground trees by this method, but it's an inexpensive and serviceable method of simulating a background forest canopy.

Put a couple of higher quality trees in the front of your "forest" (about two rows worth).  Behind those, use dowels, skewers, sticks, whatever you can find cheap to make trunks behind those.  Vary the height of these trunksGlue loose balls of green polyfiber -- you can either buy it from a hobby shop already painted green, or go to a hobby shop and buy the white stuff and paint it yourself, which is cheaper, but more work -- to the tops of your background trunks, again, making sure that these are different heights and sizes.  Spray with spray adhesive or cheap hairspray (cheaper), and sprinkle on various shades of ground foam, enough to almost completely cover the polyfiber.  Allow to dry.  Then use a paint brush to apply lighter highlights to the tops and illuminated side of your "trees".

Now, it's time for some curmudgeon to hop on and tell you why puffball trees are so 1970's and that REAL model railroaders don't use them anymore....

 

[HaroldA]

Make a trip to Michael's - or whatever craft store you might have in your area, and look at the dried/plastic flowers or weeds. Some of these have pieces that make good looking trees once they are disassembled, painted and covered with ground foam. Also, I collect goldenrod once it dies in the fall and after a little spray paint and ground foam, they look okay. I use cheap hairspray as an adhesive and it works well.

[wsdimenna]

the best trees for foreground O are sagebrush, to which super trees have been glued.  these are turned updside down and spayed brown.  Turned over and a spray adhesive is used followed by Noch leave flakes.  Use super trees as stand alone or bound for background given their smaller size for O

 

For cover on background I like to use Sedum.   For smaller trees I have use Pee hydranga and some premade from various vendors. These are always a bit small

foreground sagebrush, background left is sedium on side, background right is the pee hydranga,  and textured wall

For conifer trees that are large you can order long stems and materials from sweetwater scenery, or make your own from furnace filters. Also use ones from Grand central.

 

 

 

[cowman]

I am in HO and am currently making some conifer trees using floral wire and baling twine.  Am using a cup hook in my drill to twist the wire around the seperated twine.  Doesn't take too long to make a dozen.  I have made a couple of large (6") trees, probably could make some bigger.   For O scale I think you would want to beef up the trunks, if visible, with putty or Sculptamold.  Micro-Mark sells the ingredents and I imagine that the fibers they use are stiffer than the twine I am using.  Craft shops have the floral wire, not sure about the bristles.

Good luck,

Richard

[west willow and laurel]

I do N scale. Azalea twigs make great armatures. I cover them with Woodland Scenics fine leaf foliage. They don't resemble any specific tree types but look very good as generics.

Bear in mind tree size. I've calculated that the average tree is about three times the size of a locomotive. I vary the heights until the scene looks good.

[HHPATH56]

As you say,"Commercial trees are much too expensive.". I am in the process of making some 600 HO scale trees. For foreground trees, I prefer sage trunks with Super Tree branches glued on. I,also, use twigs (with multi-branches),found in the garden. A $25 box of Super trees will provide material for about 60 HO scale trees and a bunch of shrubs. I soak the Super trees in a 3lb.coffee can of dilute matte medium, then hang them up with clothes pins to dry. Use a plastic lined box to spray these Super trees with spray adhesive. I find it best to then swish the trees in a bag of WS Blended foam turf. For background trees, I use stained olive skewers, with green colored circles of furnace filters. These, I then spray with adhesive and swish in a plastic bag of various colors of WS foam turf. I change entire forests, with the change of seasonal color. Bob Hahn