Making Model Railway Bushes Using Tree Lichen
MRA Editors
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If you’re tired of spending your hard-earned money or your kids’ inheritance on your layout scenery, look no further than Mother Nature for an easy and inexpensive method of making model railway bushes! While they say “money doesn’t grow on trees,” lichen or fungus do—and they can be transformed into very realistic bushes that won’t cost you a thing, according to Model Railroad Academy’s Allen Keller.
In this brief video clip of alternatives to purchasing expensive, manufactured items for your layout, Allen collects tree lichen that—with a little bit of green rattle-can spray paint and white glue—can quickly, easily, and inexpensively be transformed into model railway bushes that will look great on barren spots along your model layout.
Don’t worry about spending a lot of money bringing your railroad fantasy world to life—just look around you in nature for quick and cheap ways to create model railway bushes, trees, or ground cover that look like the real thing.
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Let me show you a way to add some scenery to your layout that won't cost you anything. Now, this is vegetation that grows on trees and limbs, and I don't know exactly what it is, but it's some sort of fungus, and we're gonna make this into a bush. Now, I put it down on some tape, and then we spray it with some green paint out of a can, and I've got other pieces here that I'm working with as well, so it's more than one piece at a time. We'll put this on the layout, and it'll look just like a bush when we get done with it. And it didn't cost much at all.
After it dries, you can pick it up, and you've got the paint on it, bring it in, put some white glue on the bottom of it, and we'll apply it to the layout. And then we stick it down here with the white glue, press it down just a little bit, and we've got another bush right on the layout.
It is a form of lichen. In some parts of the Southeast, these also grow in large patches on the ground as well, especially where there is dead material for them to feed upon. If they are painted, they can last for decades. I still have some of them from when I was a teenager on my first layout. Untreated, they will dry out! They will also go dormant and can be sprayed with water to revive them for quite a while if can't paint them immediately.
Do they tend to wrought away?
Great idea............