Adding Details to a Flat Model Train Layout

So we've done some preliminary things to keep that horizontal space from looking too horizontal and too flat. We've then broken up the space with hills, and roads, and backdrops, and all that kind of stuff. We've added a bunch of vertical elements to the layout to help break up that horizontal space, and now at the very end, we're gonna start adding some details. And the reason that we're gonna add details is that it will capture people's eyes. People will focus on more of the details and, again, less on some of this horizontal space.

And to bridge the gap between verticals and details, the first thing we're gonna do is add some trees, and I've got some trees here that I've pre-made that we're gonna start adding to this area. Basically, what I'm going to use here is some fine leaf foliage by Woodland Scenics. These are trees that are made from a natural weed. They look just absolutely great. And I'm gonna use some other trees using some Woodland Scenics armatures with some of their foliage on it.

And we're going to attach these to the layout, again, with the canopy glue, and we're gonna, in the case of the trees that I'm using from Woodland Scenics that use the armatures, there's a little nub on the bottom, and we'll just kind of drill a hole for those and plug those things in there. So the first thing to do is kinda see where the trees look like they would go best. That would be a good tree for there. I like the contrast of the colors. That's actually even better.

So all I'm gonna do is just pre-drill a hole here. Again, it doesn't have to be very deep. Put a little bit of the canopy glue in there, in that hole. We'll come back later on, clean up some of the drilling debris, and kind of plug that in there. Now, if you have a problem with the trees staying vertical, this one is actually doing pretty well, you can use some modified clothespins.

I've got a clothespin here with a piece of styrene on it that basically all this does, and I've got some smaller clips here too which I think I'm gonna use in this case, and those will just clip onto the base of the tree under the trunk of the tree, and that will just help hold it until the glue dries a little bit. To plant some of the fine scale fine leaf foliage trees, these are the ones that I mentioned that are made from a natural weed material, we won't be drilling any holes but we'll be just setting those on the ground. That looks like a good place for this one. Put a little piece of canopy glue, a little drip of canopy glue on there, and then we'll hold this in place and use our clip to just hold that tree where we want it. It's falling over a little bit.

There we go. So that'll just hold there, and we'll start adding trees to this whole area to just fill out some of the spaces that still have some strong horizontal lines in them. And you could see this, this foliage material from Woodland Scenics, is easily teased and pulled. You can pull this into any kind of configuration that you really want, but I'm gonna choose a smaller tree yet for back over here. Okay, and we'll drill that hole.

Holes don't have to be too deep. It's the glue that counts. And if they don't stand up, like I said, we can use some of those clips. That one, I think, is gonna want a clip. We can use the clip back here to just hold it in place.

Now, of course, you can't put clumps of trees all down at once if you're using these clips, because the clips tend to get in the way, but because the canopy glue dries so quickly, we'll be able to remove these clips and plant trees in more in clumps. And again, when you look out in nature, realize that the trees do grow in clumps, clusters of three and four and even just two, rather than just a single tree here, a single tree there. So to help fill up the area, we'll have a little cluster of trees here and there, and that will, again, break up some of this horizontal space. The last bit of greenery that we're gonna add to the layout, as far as details goes, are bushes, and we're gonna make bushes out of two different kinds of material. First, we're gonna make bushes out of something called foliage clusters.

This is a Woodland Scenics product, and basically what it is is clumps of ground foam that are stuck together and you just pull apart pieces of them and use them as bushes. We don't wanna use anything that's way too big, but these work just great. They come in a variety of colors. I've got a dark green, a medium green, and a light green here. We're gonna use some of those as bushes, and you can see how great they look already.

And secondly, what we're gonna use as bushes is some poly fiberfill. This is, these are bushes that are made exactly the same way as we made our trees. You take a piece of poly fiberfill, spray it heavily with hairspray, put it in a bag, shake it with some ground foam, and the ground foam will stick to the trees. And this stuff is wonderful. I'm just gonna put this down over here.

This stuff is wonderful as far as simulating just undergrowth of bushes, nondescript bushes. And normally we would glue this down, but for purposes of demonstration here, I'm just going to set it on the ground and we can glue that later. Normally actually, what you'd wanna do is once you have that hairspray on there, you shake it up, you get the ground foam on it, put it on layout right away, because the hairspray will hold it to the layout. And you can tease this up a little bit if you want. Let's put a little bit over here.

I'm gonna set this back over here. Just set it lightly, let it have some vertical element to it. But you can see it's just kinda nondescript bushes. We'll put a nice chunk. And the smaller they are actually, the better they work.

We'll put a chunk back here next to the water tower. What we should do later on is remove the water tower and put a bunch of this undergrowth type of stuff underneath the water tower legs so that it looks like it's been growing in there without anybody ever pruning it back or anything. We'll just put various pieces here and there. There's a big chunk that we can add. Let's add that to the corner back here.

And again, we don't wanna get, you don't wanna get too crazy with it and make the area too busy, but again, we're trying to keep those flat areas of ground from looking quite so flat. We'll just put a nice bush right there next to the road. And that's adding bushes. We can go through the whole area and add bushes to 'em, especially back where the seams are, where the building meets the layout would be a great place to put some weeds and some bushes. Certainly where the backdrop meets the ground, we'll cover up that seam with some of these bushes.

We'll use some of our canopy glue. Just put a little couple of blops down here and there, and put some of these other foliage cluster bushes into those areas. It's great to mix the colors a little bit so that they look, so that they don't look all monochrome, monochromatic. Let's put a darker piece in there. And you can see that just kinda breaks up the area again The last detail we're going to add to this portion of the layout is probably the most important, and that's evidence of people.

People love looking for people. Your visitors love looking at the layout, looking for all the little people to see what they're doing, to see what's happening here and there, and so we're going to add some people and we're gonna add some evidence of people to just kind of humanize the whole layout. So the first thing we're gonna do is add some actual figures to the layout, and to do that, we're gonna use something called Scenic Accents Glue. This is a product by Woodland Scenics. It's a very tacky glue that once you put it on the figures' feet and let it dry, it stays tacky and it will stay tacky for a long time.

So you can reposition the figures if you want. I've got some figures selected here, and we're gonna make just a little mini scene here in our fenced-in area. Let's put a couple of workers in here. We'll have a couple of workers standing there, and you can see how wonderfully that the Scenic Accent Glue works. A couple of guys standing here, and maybe they're talking to their boss, maybe the supervisors come in.

So you've got a nice little scene there, whether he's telling him what he needs to have done or he's bawling them out or whatever. So you've got a cluster of people there. Over here at the road is another great place to put a little mini scene. So I've got a truck here that has a bit of a flat tire. We're gonna add a guy, and again, we've used the Scenic Accent Glue.

We're gonna add a guy that's kneeling down in front of it like so, maybe another guy who's taking a look at things with him. So there's a nice little scene right there by the road. And you certainly don't wanna forget having workers on the docks of buildings. You've got a guy here who looks like he's been, who looks like he's reaching for perhaps one of these barrels. And let's put another guy behind him who's kinda watching him.

Adding workers to the dock moving some boxes or in the background working on some equipment on the dock back there, once again, adds just a nice human element to everything. Adding trucks to your scene really helps add a nice human element too. So we can add some, a truck to our road there, maybe put a trucker too parked in the parking lot back here, and that really says human beings are living and working here. And let's add a truck over here at the box company loading dock. And this particular truck has a guy loading some boxes onto it.

Signs are another great way of showing that humans work and live around the area. So don't forget to put in things like crossbucks in front of your tracks, or you can add signs that show the road curves ahead and put those in the proper places. Visitors love seeing signs because signs are very familiar with them, and again, it shows that people are around the area. Plus, the signs are vertical, so it adds yet another dimension to what would have been a flat layout. And last, don't forget other evidence of human habitation, junk.

Just adding a pile of pallets and maybe a pile of empty boxes or crates or something to an area can again break up that area, make it look like humans live here, and keep things from looking so flat. So this part of the layout is looking pretty good, but there's still a bunch of work to be done. We need to ballast all the track. We need to paint the ties. We need to add some dirt at the bottom of the backdrop and around the perimeter of all the buildings so that the buildings look like they're in the ground, not on the ground, but we've come a long way.

And hopefully by now, you've seen that just because you built your layout on a piece of flat material doesn't mean it has to look flat.