I've often thought that a fall layout might look cool. I've been wondering how to do it without making the foliage look to garish. My hi-rail layout and future On30 layout are set in the midwest, and fall means lots of grain trains!

Mike

Mike,
The Woodland Scenics products blend well with each other and have realistic tones - not garish. Where I've seen people get carried away is in the painted backdrops. I've seen some that were so wild they destroyed the entire effect.

If you keep the backdrop muted, the commercial foliage material will give you a nice effect. You can control the overall fall effect by adding more or less green to the mix.

Where some people go wrong too is in adding too much yellow to the basic ground cover. Grass stays green for most of the fall.

I used all Woodland Scenics material in setting up this autumn scene on my On30 line for the fall (Oct) issue of OGR. (from the OGR website home page)



A closer view of the area:




Jim

Grain train and fall foliage - works for me.

Mike,

I also use SuperTrees and Sweetwater Scenery items to make fall foliage. The nice thing about both of those producs is that you can control the colors a little more than with Woodland Scenics.

For example, no tree turns orange, or red, or yellow at the same time. There's always a few leaves that are still green and few leaves that will be brown because they turned color early. I mix in varying degrees of light green foliage, and a little tan foliage into the main color to give that appearance. The result is a nice muted effect.



My layout will also appear in the same issue as Jim Policastro's. I think it will be great and well worth the wait.

Jim

Jim,
Isn't the anticipation something when waiting to see your layout in print?!!!

I'm really looking forward to seeing more of your layout as well as the other On30 features.

Deang,
Those BNSF colors are perfect with your fall scene. Beautiful photo.

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by deang:
Grain train and fall foliage - works for me.

Simply beautiful

BTW, I see a short lighted switch stand in the picture. Who made that?

You guys have given me some great ideas. Jim P, I like the idea of On30 with the hi-rail layout. Do you have an interchange between them?

I can't wait to see the On30 layout issue and all those gorgeous layouts. Jim193, is that an Bachmann onion-domed 2-8-0?

Deang, I would love to see more of that layout. I like what you did with the Lionel grain elevator. What is that shade of green? I like it!

Thanks guys!

Mike in Mt. Carroll

Mike,

Yep ... that's an outside frame 2-8-0 from Bachmann. At the time the picture was made, it was doing substitute duty for a straight-stack that lost it's sound unit. All of my other motive power is more typical D&RGW straight-stack power.

By the way, Bachmann's new 4-6-0, is incredible (I posted a link to some of the pictures on the Narrow Gauge thread). I really want one of those high-steppers to pull my passenger trains on the J&RG.

Jim

deang - What a gorgeous photo! The BNSF unit looks like it was made for a Fall shot, doesn't it?