Tree Experiments

I was reading fellow N Scaler Spookshow's blog and at one point he decided to add some larger trees to his layout to represent older ones. I read that and thought "a good idea's a good idea." But then, when I visited Altoona this past summer, I realized a lot of the trees near the tracks were on the small side, no doubt their growth having been stunted by years of steam locomotives dropping hot cinders.

With that in mind, I decided the smaller Woodland Scenics trees were appropriate for about 95% of the layout. However, I did pick up one large tree kit and placed them in areas away from the tracks. I placed a few in Johnstown, the farm area and in Gallitzin. And I must say, they do look quite realistic.

Now, I have to say, these Woodland Scenics trees are just one hell of a tedious pain in the ass to assemble. The prescribed method is the shape the plastic armatures into something tree-like in appearance, slather on the "Hobby Tack" and then attach the "foliage" (essential ground-up Nerf dyed varying shades of green). Well, this is what I did and I had one hell of a time getting the trees assembled. Turns out Hobby Tack is great for sticking foliage to your fingers. But for affixing it to plastic tree armatures? Not so much.

I assembled about five trees my first go around and was quite peeved to discover nearly all of them had shed their flocking a day later. So on the second time, I let the Hobby Tack dry a bit before adding foliage (another Spookshow idea). This worked marginally better but I still had issues.

On the last few batches of trees, I had tried Elmer's spray adhesive. It made for easier assembly but, it didn't last. I have a layout full of trees losing the foliage! So anyway, I still have 114 small trees to build and plant (God help me). Here's hoping I can unlock the ancient Chinese secrete to doing it right.