Details
I finally decided to paint the Chivers boxcar that I had built many years earlier. I brushed on some old Badger paint and immediately wondered why I waited so long.
Even before I built the post office platform back in December 2011, I envisioned a fence along the wall separating it from the storage yard. I looked and looked but found nothing I liked. One day in early May 2014, I chanced across an O-scale layout with a fence I liked. It was a hairpin fence from Atlas. It proved to be very hard to find as no one had stock but I finally found one at Western Depot. It is a composition fence and a little fragile to work with but I think it was worth it.
I also added a homemade fence behind the parking area for the depot. It is just strip wood and bamboo skewers painted white.
I finally got around to starting to add ground cover to the church area. I also added a Raspberry Pi B+ screwed to another crossmember to replace the laptop connection for JMRI. So here is the layout at the end of May 2014.
I got busy with other things again but I continued to putter on the layout throughout June.
I was pretty unhappy with the trees. They are too small and too alike. I bought a Super Sage kit from Scenic Express to try one of their sage brush armatures with the SuperTrees branch structure. I built one for on top of the hill at the back of the cut. I used the worst armature in the kit since I was pretty sure I would muck it up. I did. It looks okay but I really should have painted the armature after adding the SuperTrees and before the foliage as suggested. I made a root system from modeling paste and colored it with craft paints.
I also added a fence and tulips (don’t ask, I don’t know what I was thinking–tulips in November/December?) to the church yard.
I also picked out a sage armature for in front of the post office.
Here is the main line freight in late June. Not much real progress but at least I was still modeling.