CN Yellowhead Division

[Buck.H]

@Scottl im looking forward to how this develops, it looks great so far! I’d be interested if you had a recommendation on any books or other references for this line especially during the steam era?

[Scottl]

Thanks @Buck.H and @wm3798.  Nice to get to the scenery stage and hide all that black foam.

I am not aware of any books that cover this line in particular, but there is the historical society that has a regular magazine https://www.cnrha.ca/magazine and there are a lot of photographers that have captured the area over the years.   It would have been great to see some the big steam power operating on the line for sure.  There is a display locomotive in Jasper that is quite impressive, here is what it looked like 22 years ago https://railpictures.net/photo/45324/

[Scottl]

Added surface materials, a combination of sanded grouts, some fine WS foam, ground up moss and static grass.  I am trying to aim for the patchy look of the vegetation and soil with lots of the rock showing through.  It looks a bit naked without the scattered trees but those have to wait until I install the final backdrop.  My new camera seems to make the photos more saturated than they appear in the layout room.

Working on a color for the river.  I am modeling April-May so there is no sediment in the water from the glaciers.  It is a kind of blue to blue-green that is challenging to mix.  I'm going to put down a paint base and then gloss medium for reflections and wave texture.

[Scott1984]

Looks really good Scott!! Your backdrop looks awesome. That will be a great scene once complete. Thanks!

[dandopinski]

That's the only tunnel between Edson and Jasper!

[Scottl]

That's the only tunnel between Edson and Jasper!

I had a visitor yesterday and mentioned that to him.  It does not have portal structures either, just carved out of the rock.

[dandopinski]

And it's curved.

[Scottl]

I added the river rip-rap and ballasted the track.  My new camera seems to saturate everything so I manually took it back a bit to be more like it seems in the layout room. 

I won't add the trees and bushes until I get the backdrop mounted. I need to figure out again how to use Supertrees to make some aspen and birch.

I've been working on different paint colors for the river and it is not easy to find a blue(green) that is deep but not too deep.  I'll keep at it but that is the remaining piece of this scene and it needs to be convincing or it will stand out like a sore thumb.

[Angus Shops]

Hmmm, just a thought, but April/May is still pretty early spring in the Rockies - wouldn’t there still be a fair bit of snow around, particularly in the higher altitudes and even the shadowy areas at track level. And I think the Birches and Aspen would just be budding out…

[Scottl]

I guess I should refine that time window to mid-May, mostly because that is the time of year I took the backdrop photos.  It is a pretty dry area so not much snow at lower elevations, but the backdrop will show typical snow for mid-May.  The trees at that time are a vivid light green, so that will contrast to the darker spruce nicely. 

There is not much new grass growth at that time, so the dead-grass yellow look is what I am aiming for.

[Angus Shops]

I’ve been harvesting a weed that can be found growing in certain locations for all of my trees - google Jerusalem Oak Goosefoot. I’ve got thousands of conifers and hundreds of deciduous trees on my layout based on this weed and they look pretty good. And they’re free, except for the paint and Woodland Scenics ground foam. In this area the Goosefoot grows on derelict land such as construction sites, but I’ve also seen it on the edges of highways. Harvest in the fall, dry it, paint it (rattle can dark green for conifers, bright, almost lime green for deciduous) and flock it (dark green fine turf for conifers, mixed light and medium green coarse turf for deciduous). I paint the stems of my deciduous trees. Almost no work is required to select the right shape for conifer and deciduous trees, so hundreds of trees can be made in a day, particularly for the conifers.

[Angus Shops]

Argh!

[Scottl]

Interesting!  I feel like I have seen that somewhere, but not sure if it grows in this colder climate.  Those are definitely good looking trees.

I have all my trees from the last layout:  1500+ of them.  The larger ones are too large and full for Alberta so I will be looking for alternatives, probably wire/sisal rope armatures and flocking.  It would be very attractive to have a natural armature to use.  Maybe I need to take a trip to BC to harvest .

The smaller ones in my collection are Ebay specials that look good in more distant locations so I can use those in some settings.

[mark.hinds]

(inverted cell phone image removed)

Image flipped using Adobe Photoshop: 

[Angus Shops]

Jerusalem Oak Goosefoot is considered an invasive plant species (native to the Med), but not a huge problem because it only successfully establishes on disturbed areas and does not compete with native plants in better habitat. On line research has identified it as established in places like Montana and Minnesota, so it’s probably in a neighborhood near you. I’m pretty sure I saw in roadside in Alberta and Saskatchewan, but I didn’t slow down to confirm (insert joke about driving across the Prairies).