Enter the Growlery: Dead Tree Edition

Post-derecho remains of a pine tree with a 23" diameter trunk as seen in 2026.
The internet tells me this tree could have been up to 115 years old!
That age is sobering.

'Sit down, my dear,' said Mr. Jarndyce. 'This you must know, is the Growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.'

'You must be here very seldom, sir,' said I.

'O, you don't know me!' he returned. 'When I am deceived or disappointed in - the wind, and it's Easterly, I take refuge here. The Growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!'

John Jarndyce explains the need for his Growlery in Bleak House to Esther Summerson (the 'said I' in the above); from Chapter VIII, Covering a Multitude of Sins in Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

Top piece of said pine tree that bounced off the roof my vehicle

On the May Victoria Day weekend in 2022 one of the most powerful storms in Canadian history swept through Ontario and Quebec, extending 1,000 km from Windsor in the west all the way to Quebec City in the east.

We were in a cabin in the bush when the storm blew through. We survived alright, but our vehicle didn't: the top 2 or 3m or so of a mature pine tree that was maybe 18 to 24 metres tall snapped off in the fury and bounced off the roof of our vehicle. Luckily only the top-most part of that log hit our vehicle, but that was enough to put a significant V-shaped dent in the roof, wreck the sun-roof, smash the windshield, and crush all the roof mounted electronics. I'll say this for Honda's CRV, it can take a punch as it was still drivable. Total repair bill: $10K. Luckily again, insurance covered it. 

Ignominiously being towed home as seen by me from the back window of the tow truck.
It was drivable, but the windshield was completely shattered and the cops said it would likely blow out at speed.
No, it didn't blow out while being towed, but why risk it? The interior was already covered in glass shards. 

Back in the fall of 2021 I had started to take a serious interest in trees and how to model them. Strangely, experiencing this event, and seeing all the smashed and destroyed trees, deepened my fascination with them. There was something about seeing how all these seemingly solid, eternal things, could all be destroyed in a matter of seconds struck a chord. Yes, yes, I have a couple of chainsaws, I've cut down trees and cleared brush, I've seen logging, but this was different: it was wild, violent, and pitiless.

Well, then spring turned into summer as it usually does :-)

I did a lot of sitting around that summer of 2022 because I had injured my left shoulder and it was taking a long time to heal. On the day in late July when the summer issue of Voie Libre arrived I was sitting under a tree in the backyard so I decided to read the issue as soon as the mailman dropped it off in the afternoon. This line in the editorial got me chuckling: "Issue 110 of Voie Libre is designed to be enjoyed sitting in a shady corner, with a few friends and a glass of cool wine. Just like a proper summer issue should be, packed with ideas for projects, or simply dreaming of projects, in case action is postponed until autumn." 

That's exactly what I was doing: drinking some cool red wine under the shade of a tree and thinking about layout projects now and then. 

And I got to thinking about how I hadn't seen a Canadian themed layout by a Canadian in that magazine even though I'd seen some excellent Canadian inspired ones by non-Canadians. They were a little on the stereotypical side in my view as there was something about them didn't properly say 'Canada' to me. That's when I decided as a bit of a lark to take some photos of the Loonar Module and send them off to the editor. One thing lead to another, and I was very happy to see the Loonar Module appear in the Spring 2023 issue of Voie Libre, and later in the Nov'23 issue of The Interchange, the OVAR's newsletter.

The very first construction photo of the Loonar Module from October 2021.
Positioning the island and track plan on 2' x 2' foam sheets.
At the time I didn't know this was classified as a micro-layout, albeit a large one.

The Loonar Module doesn't completely reflect the entirety of Canada either. No layout can as they are all reflections of how the builder sees and experiences the specifics of their piece of the country and translates that into a layout. The Loonar Module's terrain is based on that found in some of my favourite haunts in Hastings County, Ontario, which are dominated by tall trees, extensive wild forests, rocks, rocks, and more rocks, and lakes. Oh, and loons of course :-) The whole story about a narrow gauge experimental test railway run by the Ontario Department of Lands & Forests is completely fictional, but with lots of inspiration from the real government department. 

Final configuration of the Lost Ocean Line (dimensions in cms).
I must admit this was a favourite which the Way Out Layout has not yet surpassed even though it was meant to.

I consider The Loonar Module my first truly personal expression in layout form. The old Lost Ocean Line, and its descendant, the Way Out Layout, incorporated personal elements too, but they had a lot of outside stuff on them as well that steered the layouts towards being statements of style and whimsy. 

One of the first planning photos of the Centennial Experimental Farm layout from September 2022

Work on the Centennial Experimental Farm layout started in the fall of 2022 as my shoulder started to feel better. The layout is an homage to Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm, a place I would frequently visit on my bicycle, and incorporates many of the features I like about it. It turns out the farm did have a trolley line, so unlike the Loonar Module the rail aspect isn't completely fictional. I also consider this layout a personal statement. The Centennial Experimental Farm appeared in the January 2025 issue of Continental Modeller. 

Early design work on the Havelock Yard layout in July 2023

The Havelock Yard layout came about because early in July 2023 I became obsessed with building some sort of nostalgic tribute to the real Havelock yard that I've visited since the 1970s. The track plan is an inglenook with some display tracks added so I could show off a few models of freight cars I've seen there over the years. The layout is operable, but I haven't finished the scenery. Ok, strictly speaking, I haven't really started on the scenery. There's something too personal about this layout that gets triggered whenever I make a start on scenery that causes me to stop. Maybe one day I'll figure out what that is. So even though this layout is also a personal statement, it has some sort of negative charge associated with it.

After 4 days of part time work I had the infrastructure for the 3 pieces for my entry to
Le Grand Defi finished! A record of sorts for me.

I started my entry for LR Presse's 'Le Grand Defi' in late February 2024. Although it was for a challenge, I instantly had an idea for an entry based on VIA's Sudbury to White River line, complete with RDC. I considered this a personal response to the challenge, and not some stereotyped concoction for contest purposes. I was quite energized as I built this thing and finished in record time for me, completing all three pieces by late April 2024. I still have this extended diorama as I don't have the heart to cannibalize it for parts.

Starting to play around with objects to size the Mt. Lowe trolley.
Track planning came later when the trolley was finished.

I was on some sort of high at the end of April 2024 and immediately began work on the Mount Lowe Layout, which was a layout I've had in mind building since 2013 or so and now I finally had an idea on how to proceed. However, unlike the other personal layouts I didn't start with a track plan, but with building a vehicle inspired by Thaddeus Lowe's personal trolley. I needed it to help figure out the curve radii and grades on the layout. 

Ok, this layout isn't set in Ontario, but in a fictionalized version of California's San Gabriel Mountains. All I can say is I've hiked parts of the Mt. Lowe trail twice, have studied the railway for a long time, and have been charmed by it for a number of reasons. So, I'll claim a personal connection and this layout as a personal expression. If the world wasn't in the state it's in right now, I would return to finish hiking and exploring all the sections of the trail I haven't yet seen. The Mt. Lowe layout appeared in the Summer 2026 issue of Voie Libre.

Photos from the early planning days on:
Top: Community Garden | Middle: Tintin 2001 | Bottom: Inglenook Lake

Which brings me to today, almost exactly five years after beginning the Loonar Module in September 2021, which started me on the path I'm on now. Right now I have 3 little layouts on the go. I think the Community Garden layout will proceed and get finished. It'll be my first true micro-layout, and not one that pushes the outer size boundaries as have my others. It's both a personal statement on a place I quite like, and has a number of technical and modelling challenges I'm quite interested in working on. The Tintin 2001 layout might be stalled for awhile as I think about how to panel the monolith pit. Inglenook Lake will likely proceed as I think it's going to be a deeply personal layout, possibly with a more serious feeling to it than either the Loonar Module, the Centennial Experimental Farm, or Mount Lowe.

Yet another sketch for an MCM-7 Taronna (aka Toronto) layout.

The 500-lb gorilla lurking in the background is Taronna, my homage to the places and streetcars of Toronto that has yet to take off even though I've built many buildings for it, doodled many sketches, and acquired many streetcars. The Lost Ocean Line had some Toronto pieces incorporated; the ill-fated Alta Vista TC (for Transportation Commission) was a serious attempt at a Toronto layout, but it had so many design problems it was completely unworkable, and most importantly, was boring; and Taronna, the MCM-7 version of Toronto, is still just lines on paper. This layout continues to be parked. I have a Rapido TTC CLRV on pre-order to complete the streetcar fleet for this thing, so when it arrives in the far flung future I hope my thoughts will have settled on a way to proceed with the layout.

I think there are a few reasons why some layouts get finished and others stall out: 

Too much nostalgia is a killer. The Havelock Yard, Alta Vista TC, and even the yet to be started Taronna are soaked in personal nostalgia. Clearly, it doesn't sit well with me. I need to think more about Taronna if I'm going to actually build something that reflects whatever is going on in my brain about this layout.

No room for improvisation. I think at some level I perceived a lack of possibilities for improvisation in the Alta Vista TC and Havelock Yard that helped to kill the first and stall out the second. I explicitly consigned the Lost Ocean Line to the junk yard precisely for such a lack. I feel the improvisational lack creeping into Tintin 2001 too, and it certainly was a factor in stopping work on the N-scale homage layout to E. L. Moore's Elizabeth Valley RR. Well, that one was also stalled by the complicated wiring work involved. I'm not a fan of wiring and electrical work. I sometimes wonder if Mr. Moore had someone wire his layout for him because he noted in his writings a distaste for it, and the EVRR is relatively complicated wiring wise.

Trees. This one sounds strange even to me. It seems like if a layout has plenty of trees, interesting ones, not dull store bought ones, then it has a high chance of not stalling out during construction. Well, no stall outs so far.  As evidence I present the tree dense Loonar Module, the Centennial Experimental Farm, and Mt. Lowe. Look, both the soon to be tree dense Community Garden and Inglenook Lake layouts are on my construction tables while the tree barren Havelock Yard, Tintin 2001, and the EVRR, are off to the side in the workshop. Maybe this is a sign? I'm already thinking of trees and tree placement on Inglenook Lake based on my derecho and post-derecho observations of trees in Hastings County, and I haven't even finalized the track plan yet! 

Story. When it comes to story I think mine have to have one to be successful. Looking back on the story side of things I think I'm sort of a Johnny One Note in this regard. I have this one 'master story' in my head, and I all I do is write additions to it and variations on it. Every successful layout, even including the Lost Ocean Line and the Way Out Layout, are bits of that story. Well, except maybe Mt. Lowe, which is an outlier I need to think about more. Stalled layouts either have no story, don't derive from the 'master story', or are dominated by nostalgia. I'm starting to agree with Johannes Hofer that nostalgia is a deadly disease! 

More sketches for Taronna

I'm still trying to fully understand what that 'master story', that conglomeration of veiled personal statements in fictional form, is all about, but here are my thoughts so far. 

To get the best sense of where my mind is at regarding a ‘master story’ is to read the novellas I wrote and posted in instalments here at this blog. 

The first one was called Light Ray Blues. The inaugural instalment was posted on 6 September 2012 and can be found here. The last instalment was published on 13 August 2013. Most of the story was composed in my head on lunchtime walks away from the office. Strangely, this novella was the most popular series of posts at the blog until I started in on the long running E. L. Moore series.

The second novella was unimaginatively called Light Ray Blues, Series 2, and the first instalment was published on 6 June 2015. It can be found here. The series wrapped up on 30 October 2016 with instalment #20.

The third novella was called Abandonment and kicked off on 27 March 2020 after a long hiatus. This was a short series, and the 10th and final part was posted on 17 July 2022. Yes, over 2 years later! I was losing interest. At the end of the 10th post I include a post-script on abandonment in general and abandoning the series.

I tried to revive the series with a new novella called Tales of The Midnight Hobby Shop. The first instalment appeared on 2 September 2024. This series only ran for 3 instalments, but unlike the others it was left in an unfinished state. I left everything hanging in the 5 October 2024 episode. 

There were a few stand alone, single post stories too. One was written as an ersatz episode of The Twilight Zone where Ed Bryce visits E. L. Moore, another has Frank Madwood confronting three spirits in a Christmas Carol homage, and a third is a transcript from Madwood’s call-in radio show where he discusses the differences between model railroads and layouts with Professor Mary Ellesmere of the University of New Toronto’s Centre for Rail Guided Transportation.

I refer to all four novellas and stories in the series as Streetcar Noir, reflecting the dominance of streetcars in the series, and that they’re written in my attempt at a somewhat tongue-in-cheek hard-boiled noir style.

I wrote a little guide to the characters, places, and technology that appear in Streetcar Noir in the so-called ‘Understory’ that you can find at the bottom of the second instalment to Abandonment. 

I’m thinking the series ran out of steam with Abandonment and Tales of The Midnight Hobby Shop because of the pandemic, and that I was spending more and more time on layout dreaming, layout construction, and making things for those layouts. Maybe the ‘master story’ had formed enough in my mind by then that I could set it aside awhile and pursue it in model form.

Taronna thoughts continue to develop

The world those novellas take place in is a Canada in a parallel universe. Most of action takes place in a city called New Toronto, some of its outskirts, and nearby wilderness areas; however, the stories do move at times to Ottawa and British Columbia.

In this version of Canada electric powered rail guided transportation systems dominate the transportation landscape: electric streetcars, trams, trains, personal railcraft, along with some non-rail automobiles and trucks. There’s something called the Inter-Track system, which is vast network of many rail gauges and weights for all sorts of rail vehicles that runs through all cities, towns, villages, and wilderness areas. Ed Bryce has inherited a little trolley shed on a spur of one chunk of the Inter-Track System that runs through a forest area a few hundred kilometres from New Toronto. Telecommunications technologies aren’t that developed in this alternate world. A rudimentary internet-like system can be accessed through kiosks located near some public telephones.

The setting and tales are highly anachronistic. I mix technologies and styles from various eras according to my own likes and dislikes. There are handheld sources of cold fusion power, advanced electric-powered vehicles, and so on, rubbing shoulders with telephone booths and lunch counters and other accoutrements of our own world and its pre-internet predecessors. I freely take this approach with my layouts too. In my mind lots of eras exist in parallel so I have no problem expressing that. Maybe I believe that all time exists at once and its directedness is an illusion created by our physical being, but I’m probably wrong, but it sure often seems that way.

There aren’t any geopolitics directly discussed in the stories, but New Toronto is so-called because in its universe a big chunk of Toronto was destroyed in a brief continent-wide war and was rebuilt in the aftermath. Hints at what happened appear in some instalments. For example, in the first series Ed Bryce recalls how as part of an energy deal China built a cross-Canada mag-lev system. In the 3rd part of Light Ray Blues, Series 2, Frank Madwood explains how being injured in the war lead to his career in scale modelling, and the founding of his company, Model Investigations.

The characteristics of this long series of stories and the features of the layouts that didn’t stall out seem to be cut from the same cloth. Even the Mt. Lowe layout sort of fits given its highly anachronistic style, with its continuation of the railway into something approximating our era, much like the Loonar Module and Experimental Farm do. Story fragments pop up in construction posts from time-to-time, and upon re-reading some of them, they could easily form the basis of new novella instalments in the world of Streetcar Noir. Here’s a few: one, two, three, four.  On the other hand, the stalled layouts seem to all fall outside the concepts established in Streetcar Noir. Maybe one reason the successful layouts are successful is because they follow a prototype: the world of the ‘master story’, the Streetcar Noir story?

Hmm. This lengthy investigation may point to ways to pull the stalled layouts out of limbo. I’ll let you know. Thanks for hanging in until the end. I had no idea where contemplation of a tree stump would take me :-)

I returned to the scene this year to slice off the top of the stump for a layout base.
My chainsaw proved to be no match for the mighty stump :-(
(Also, the terrain was a bit too challenging for me chain saw wielding-wise.)

Tree armature done

Left: Finished armature | Right: Leftover tree from Centennial Experimental Farm Layout.

I recently completed the armature for the first community garden tree. I had planned to model two rather large trees that are in the garden, but after test placing the finished armature of the first one I thought two such large trees would create too much shade on the plots, so I'm just going to model one, which is my favourite of the two. That second completed tree shading the picnic table is one I had leftover from the Centennial Experimental Farm layout. Right now the layout looks a little lopsided with two trees on one end and nothing on the other. I think balance will be restored when I add the little structure that will cover the loco at its charging station along with some tall shrubs. Stay tuned!

Book Review: Landscape Modelling

A little earlier in the week the copy of Landscape Modelling by Barry Norman I ordered arrived in the mail. Like a lot of books I've bought recently it has been on my list for a long time, and finally one came up for sale online at a decent price.

It's a clean copy, and there isn't any indication inside of who the previous owner was or where this book may have resided before coming to Canada. All I can say is it was published by Wild Swan Publications of England in 1986. If you're doing any comparative reading you might want to dig up your copies of John Olson's 1983 book, Building an HO Model Railroad with Personality, and Malcom Furlow's 1984 book. HO Narrow Gauge Railroad You Can Build. Both were published by Kalmbach in the US. Even though Olson's and Furlow's book cover all aspects of model railway construction, it's interesting to compare their scenery modelling techniques to Norman's given that all three books were all published in the same era. 

The entire book is an enchanting mixture of prototype photos, model photos,
and expertly drawn line illustrations.

I liked this book right from the get-go. Bob Barlow, the editor of Model Railway Journal, has this to say in the Foreword which sets the tone for the pages to come:

"However, there's far more to this slim volume [JDL: it's only 66 pages] than useful modeller's hints and wrinkles; there is a deeper dimension which speaks of success out of failure, of observation blending with a determination to get things right, and, above all, of love for the subject - in this case, our own British landscape. Looking around and loving what you see is a taller order than taking it for granted as most of us do, especially when those surroundings are conventionally 'ugly' like so many urban landscapes today. But somewhere, even in the grimmest of city wastes, beauty exists. And if you're out there studying the landscape closely enough - in order to build an accurate model, for example - you will assuredly find it. Not just once, but dozens of times: images that will linger and give inner pleasure for many, many years. I find it comforting that this hobby of ours - which most will concede is a fairly insignificant part of whatever great scheme exists - can lead us to great insights into our relationship with our own small planet."

Inside is a thoughtful account of how to go about creating a landscape for a model railway. It discusses both design and implementation aspects, and the author's layout, 'Petherick', provides examples. It's well written, clear, and the modelling techniques are effective and easy to understand. All the photos are black-and-white, but that hardly seems to matter given the excellence of the text.

This book is also great for just dipping into and browsing. Well, all Wild Swan publications are, but this one especially so for me because I'm a sucker for well done line drawings, and there are a lot in this book. The layout of the book is excellent too. Inspired page layout is a rarity these days, so it's even more impressive to me when I just stumble across it.

Out on the back porch with my 'tree box' getting a start on the community garden trees,
and looking through my just arrived copy of Landscape Modelling.

The book showed up at an interesting time. I had started work on making trees for the community garden layout, and I had just heard of David Hockney's passing, so I was a bit preoccupied with thinking about landscapes.

Hockney was a favourite artist. I never pay much attention to the passing of media figures, but this one hit home. As silly as it sounds, he seemed like an indomitable presence who would live forever. His work was varied, but I especially appreciated his thoughts that direct observation and wrestling with the problems of depiction were key things to deal with in art, as it should be for railway modellers. Here is Sam Hamper's tribute to Hockney where he goes into that and many other things about his life:

At around the 7:23 mark Hockney makes an interesting observation about trees in a discussion about perspective, well, maybe it's an obvious observation, but I thought it was good he said it out loud:

"Any cameraman will tell you it's not so easy to film the tallness of trees for instance because you have to look up to see the tallness. It's the tallness that would give you the majesty of the tree isn't it? The majestic nature."

Which is why I think it's important to model trees to their correct scale height and volume, otherwise it's conventional toy train lollipop trees all the way down that are completely without majesty. 

There are a lot of Hockney videos at YouTube, but I'll simply point out this short one of Hockney painting a tree dominated scene in Yorkshire:

The ways of the YouTube recommendation algorithm are a mystery to me. As I was looking for Hockney videos it recommended some from a channel called Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't ! The videos at that channel are serious, hilarious, and scathing, but in line with Barlow's comment that "... somewhere, even in the grimmest of city wastes, beauty exists" have a look at this poignant one of a tour of an abandoned Southern Pacific station in West Oakland, California (Warning: This is serious stuff):

 

A year in the life of a community garden tree

26 May 2025

15 July 2025

17 August 2025

18 August 2025

21 September 2025

14 December 2025

14 February 2026

16 February 2026

4 April 2026

23 April 2026

15 May 2026

18 May 2026

The community garden has a few trees scattered here and there. One is going to be represented on the layout; likely this one. It'll be planted by the re-charging spur for the electric loco, providing shade for the loco while it recharges.

AI and I have aesthetic differences

Picture of the modification to the Loonar Module micro-layout created by Gemini

Recently Vince and I had a discussion about an interesting question he posed to Gemini: can you critique the layout in this photo (or some similar phrasing)? The layout and photo being referred to is this one, the Loonar Module:

The real Loonar Module awaiting dusting.

I'm told Gemini felt there were too many trees, and when asked to create a picture of a revised layout produced the one shown in the lead photo to this post. Its suggestion stripped away the core design I had in mind for this layout and reduced it to something that reminded me of what our environment looked like here after the Victoria Day 2022 derecho swept across Ontario.

I didn't act on Gemini's suggestion and have no intention to. 
The Loonar Module awaits good weather so I can assess its dustiness outside in sunlight.

I mention this AI encounter because I think it highlights something important with the LLM AI variants that are freely available to consumers like me: they're only as good as their training, and they can't get out into the world to see and reflect on things as we can. I know these are obvious points that no doubt many others have noted, but for obvious reasons this example cuts close to my heart.

The 'prototype' of the Loonar Module landforms and scenery.

The Loonar Module had two main aims: to allow me to build a diorama of an area of the province I love, and allow me space to practice making trees based on species found here. 

Secondarily, the layout allowed me to explore some ideas in a somewhat humorous manner I'd been kicking around in my head about highly fictional Ontario narrow gauge railways. I tried to capture some early thoughts in a couple of episodes of the Streetcar Noir novella series back in 2015: Gone to the country and If a phone rings in the forest.

Same 'prototype', different view.

The micro-layout aspect came later. I wasn't tuned into micro-layouts when I started work on the project, and only realized when it was done that it classified as one because it was built on a stack of pre-cut foam slabs I purchased that happened to measure 2' x 2'. It was a completely accidental entry into the field.

'Prototype' of the little offshore island Gemini stripped the trees from.

Longtime readers may remember The Dictionary of Non-Existent Model Railroad Terms series I ran here from 2019 to 2024. Although the entries were presented in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner, the principles and terms presented were dead serious. 

The dictionary has a few entries dealing with how to capture the spirit and atmosphere of a location as part of a model railway's design work. The three I use often, and used on the Loonar Module, are: Full Observation, Three Ws, and Start with Geography. Those entries encapsulate my views on getting out and observing things, something AIs can't do.

'Prototype' loons: mom, dad, and junior.

AIs don't approach design in the way those dictionary entries recommend. It seems they look for patterns in example model railways they're trained on. Trees are sparse on many layouts, maybe the majority, so I'd guess and say if sparse is the dominant training pattern, then sparse is what gets recommended. 

In my opinion tree density is already far sparser than the 'prototype', even with 23 trees.

After the layout was built I discovered that by insisting on trees that were scaled to match their real life counterparts height-wise, they act as effective view blockers so that the entire layout can't be observed in a single glance. Basically the tall trees allowed the creation of four distinct scenes. This lesson regarding the use of height as a way to create scenes is one I've continued to use, and it seems an important way to make micros seem bigger.

A corner of the 'prototype' community garden.

Trees also figured prominently on the Centennial Experimental Farm layout, and will on the Community Garden micro. So, with the Loonar Module they form something of a trilogy, or maybe, strictly speaking, a tree-logy :-) I hope my AI friends are taking note.

Dusty Trees

Over the weekend a friend got in touch and asked if I was going to the Ontario Narrow Gauge Show in May, and if so, would I consider bringing the Loonar Module? It's around a 500 km and 5 hour or so drive from here, so it's a long trip, but that aside, the Loonar Module is looking pretty dusty these days, especially the central tall pines and lake. I decided to take it down to the workshop to try and clean it up and revive it over the next few days to see if it can be made presentable. As well, I'm not sure how it will stand up to a long trip. 

Ok, first things first, dust removal and 'sprucing' up, logistics later. Well, while I'm at work, I'll leave you with the Dusty you're likely thinking about, Dusty Springfield.

27 Trees

Layout cranked up to nearly the ceiling.

When I work on my little layouts I do so at a standing desk that I've put on wheels, equipped with a 2' x 4' hardboard top, and has a crank so I can move that surface up and down. It comes in quite handy when it's time to add scenery as I can crank the top surface up and down as well as turn the whole thing to various angles since it's on wheels. This allows me to get a variety of views while I'm adding things.

Over the last few weeks I've been adding trees to fill out the scenes. There're 27 in total. Funny thing is back in May I thought I had made too many trees! Turns out I was right and wrong. I had a few too many tall ones and not enough small ones, so I had to make some little trees to balance out the scenes.

The other side.

These days I'm adding rock debris and shrubbery. At one time I thought I would put in the effort to accurately replicate chaparral found in the region, but I've given up on that and decided to keep with the more simplified and somewhat abstract look I've started with the trees. I'm focusing on size, placement, and colour instead of fidelity to 'prototype'. 

Adding shrubs and other foliage is taking a surprisingly long time. Ok, I'm the problem because as usual my method is to add a bit, have a look, add a little more, take a break, look again, and so on - my standard operating procedure on this layout. So, you can see why it's a long process :-)

First tree

The first tree off the assembly line for the Mt. Lowe layout. Needs a bit of fluffing and trimming here and there, but it's usable. I think I made more armatures than I'll need on this layout, but no doubt I'll have a use for them in the future.

Work stoppage at the tree factory

Back in March I made a start on twisting up trunk armatures for the trees that will appear on the Mt. Lowe layout. Since then I've been following the procedure for finishing the trunks that I used on the Loonar Module.

Once I had coated the trunks with 2 layers of sand to give them texture I started in on painting and trimming branches.

As I was working I started to test out tree placement on the layout to see how things might look. I quickly realized that just about every tree is going to need some custom trimming to make it look like it actually grew up in the area where I planted it. 

That being the case I figured I should stop working on trees until I was ready to install them as it didn't make sense to build up generic trees and then wind up trimming off a lot of work to get each one to fit. 

So, I've stopped work on trees and started making uprights for the circular bridge. Once the bridge is done, the layout's basic scenic components will all be in place and I'll be ready for adding details such as trolley wire support poles, pterodactyl petroglyphs, and trees.

Tree factory

I need a lot of trees. Maybe 50. Lots for the Mt. Lowe layout. Some for that lumber shed diorama. A few to have around just in case. Right now I'm twisting up armatures for conifers. It'll take awhile to make 'em, but time's not an issue.

Replanting a mighty tree

Vicki's tree after planting in January

Back in January I finished and planted the large tree for the front of the Centennial Experimental Farm layout.

The 'prototype' tree outside Vicki's 

Paul noted the tree seemed too large and the bifurcation was too high off the ground. At the time I was obsessed with how big the tree was, so I didn't do anything. But, the comment kept rattling around in the back of my mind. 

As I was working on the Mt. Lowe layout I moved the Centennial Farm layout to a corner of the workshop to give me some extra elbow room. The farm was never out of sight, and I could see that tree in all its extra tall glory every time I worked on the Mt. Lowe track.

Drilling a deeper and wider hole for the tree

That constant visual reminder - nagging? :-) - convinced me that once I got the Mt. Lowe track functioning I'd reposition the tree.

And so I did. 

This change seems to have made a big difference in my opinion of the layout. It looks more balanced. Yeah, I still need to work on my technique for shaping and colouring bark; however, the overall scene is better.