HO somewhere in Appalachia.....

[LIRR]

Weathered another.....

[LIRR]

Finished about 7 linear feet of track.....painted ties, ballast, weathering powder on the rails.....

[Ed Kapuscinski]

[LIRR]

Same method....white wash for fade, black wash afterwards. Then black weathering powder along bottom

[wazzou]

Looks good, still doing just one side?

[LIRR]

I apply both washes to both sides.....only sand away lettering and add powder to the one side.

[wazzou]

Nice work.

[LIRR]

Working on foreground scenery...trees between tracks and edge of bench work

[LIRR]

I figure I will carelessly snap one off in less than a month

[basementcalling]

I remember reading somewhere about a guy who made the base of his scenery between the track and fascia from soft yellow foam. He did just grass and trees, but with the sponginess of the foam, stray elbows just knocked the trees down and they sprang back into place.

Some of those trunks look a little thin for HO scale, but the overall scene looks outstanding.

[packers#1]

There was also an article by Tony Koester about attaching the base of foreground trees to a spring to prevent breakage; I’ll look up which issue of Model Railroader it was tomorrow morning if I remember

[LIRR]

Agreed, trunks are under size, but the tips of the weed I use look sufficiently tree like as is and it’s easy get them on the layout. I may shorten them, or replace after I make more trees. The 7 linear feet of nearly completed scenery has 22 conifers and 87 dead deciduous - excluding these skinny tips and many, many short saplings.

[LIRR]

I need to get moving with weathering the fleet....

[LIRR]

[Ed Kapuscinski]

This makes me tingly.

But as a long time winter modeler, I want to pass along an observation that a friend of mine had on my efforts. She asked if I was modeling the desert. "What?" I asked "no, it's just December". She told me to look outside. She was right. There was still a surprising amount of greenery around. Grass that was still slightly green, evergreen bushes, shrubs and trees, etc...

I'd recommend taking a good look at some of your reference materials and seeing if there are any green elements that make sense to add, especially in the undergrowth (your pines are killer already).