How about some suggestions for making snow on an n scale layout?
Is this for a seasonal layout or will it be perminent?
Woodland Scenics makes snow and I presume some other scenery folks do too. You might be able to find a textured spray paint that was nearly white or just use a flat white spray from a can. N scale snow would be very fine.
Good luck,
Richard
The biggest problem I have heard of with snow is keeping it clean.
Ahem... This is North Dakota
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
I once considered a snow scene and another very skilled scenicker warned me that snow was hard to keep clean and (then) clean due to dust, etc. Has this been everyone's general experience? I ended up using Gesso for my snow capped peaks which is simple to vacuum off, instead.
Thanks, Jim
Raised on the Erie Lackawanna Mainline- Supt. of the Black River Transfer & Terminal R.R.
John Allen allegedly decided to do a snow scene on the G&D - possibly for a Varney Christmas ad. He sifted some flour on the scene, shook over-heavy accumulation off some evergreens, then added trains, people and 'critters.'
The scene photographed well - but he quickly removed everything not firmly attached and vacuumed the evidence. His birds were all flying South.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with snow in Sno-Cones)
I would guess that icing sugar could be used, or fine baking powder or baking soda. As suggested above, this would not do for a permanent season scene, especially the sugar. It would attract critters. The soda or powder would not attract pests, but it would get dusty over time and have to be cleared with a vacuum.
It takes surprisingly little to make a scene realistic. You might think you'd need six or seven measured cups of the material to cover a couple of square feet convincingly, but you'd need less than half of that.
I had pretty good results making "snowcaps" for several of my mountains. I eventually want to do the whole mountain range like this.
Basically, I carved the base for the "caps" out of pink foam, fitting each one carefully to the mountain as I worked.
Here's how the armature fits atop my snowshed and mountains.
Then I laid down some plastic wrap to protect the mountain, followed by Scupltamold that was shaped to look like snow drifts.
Once the Scupltamold sets up, you end up with something like this, pictured from the underside.
Repeat as needed. For now, I just did the end mountains by the snowshed.
Where there's snow, there are often avalanches.
Then you call out a work train and set to it...
I eventually want to shoot some scenes with "loose snow" enhancing things. For most purposes, these "caps" may be a better choice. Once made, they're not messy and are easy to deploy to change seasons. The Sculptamold is white. I paint it flat white, then use some iridescent gloss acrylic brushed over all to get that snowy, icy look.
Here's the SnoCat playing on the mountain.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I've recently built an ntrak module featuring a winter scene. I used the Woodland Scenics snow, but am not impressed with the results - it's granual size is too big for N scale. Depending on the size of the area you're going to cover, I've heard marble dust works well - but haven't tried it yet myself. Depending on the depth of the snow you want (I just wanted a dusting) the Sculptamold or Glesso might be a good base and simply paint it arctic white.
I think just about the best snow I have seen on a model railroad was in an article in the February 2007 MR. The modeling was by a European professional named Josef Brandl and the adaptation of his article was by Frank Rittig and Carl Swanson. There are many steps to the process but essentially Brandl used Noch's Powdery Snow product for the ground, and Busch's adhesive Snow Powder for trees.
Dave Nelson