Anybody got ideas for making snow?

[THayman]

Anybody out there got any ideas or experience making snow for winter layouts? I thought about using flour at first, though I have some concerns. Anybody know what works well and looks good?

[bgrossman]

I saw some snow in a shaker from Woodland Scenics at my LHS a couple of days ago.

Bernie

[ndbprr]

The big prblem is that everything yellows over time and it will be a constsnt efort to keep it looking fresh. Don't use baking soda it will cause some corrosion. I would want to experiment with sifted plaster much the way ground foam is installed and plan to paint it in the future.

[Javern]

the best fake snow

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/product/1262

[scole100]

I have used the Woodland Scenics before and thought it was a good product.

[Anonymous]

Javern, wouldn't Spangler's snow evaporate and become powder again over time? How would you rejuvenate it once it's on your layout, if it went back to powder, as he said it did on that lawn?

[cwclark]

what's snow?....i live in southeast Texas and haven't ever seen the stuff...chuck [:D]

[cacole]

On our club layout, we just left the plaster unpainted on the top of the mountain, and it looks like snow cover. The problem with various types of powders is that you suck them up when you need to vacuum your layout, which we must do before each open house because we are in a very dusty climate with no climate control in the building.

[Javern]

i think over time any option would need to be replaced, repaired, cleaned, etc

[selector]

Right you are, Javern. However, I wonder if the WS stuff can be rinsed, dried, and re-sprinkled if one can get it off the layout relatively easily. Other sources of 'snow' mentioned above won't fare very well with this method.

[Anonymous]

So far the definitive article for modelling snow has to be Rand Hoods' article (in two parts) in Jan 1996 Model Railroader page 78 and February 1996. His snow bases consisted of 3 ounces of paintable white caulk with 1/2" of tube white acrylic paint and a touch of acrylic pthalo blue. His second snow base was 1 ounce of acrylic titanium white with 1 ounce acrylic modeling paste, 1/2 ounce gloss medium, 1/2 ounce heavy gel medium and again a touch of pthalo blue. For sheet ice he used enviroTex with pthalo blue. Vintage Reproductions snow products represented various snow conditions. Hope this helps.

[snowey]

in the Dec., 2000 issue of Model Railroader, there's an article that tells how they "winterized" one of their project layouts.
Also, the Kalmbach book "Building Model Railroad Scenery" by Dave Faray, tells a few mothods for making snow and ice.

[pcarrell]

How about plaster covered with a fine layer of marble dust?

[oleirish]

A number of years ago I had a layout that had a large mountian in it,I used spray snow you can get every X-mas for x-mas trees,It worked real good,i haqd some trees on the mountian ,by holding the spray can pointed up the snow fell on the trees and looked real[8D]

OLE'IRISH

[pcarrell]

How was the longevity? Yellowing?