With the reeds all done and behind me, I finished flocking all the Supertrees so they are ready to plant. But before I started planting them I wanted to try and make some specific trees: Loblolly Pines. These are found in the area I model and I think they'll add to the overall look. According to Wikipieda: Pinus taeda, commonly known as loblolly pine, is one of several pines native to the Southeastern United States, from East Texas to Florida, and north to southern New Jersey.[2] The wood industry classifies the species as a southern yellow pine.[3] U.S. Forest Service surveys found that loblolly pine is the second-most common species of tree in the United States, after red maple.[4] For its timber, the pine species is regarded as the most commercially important tree in the Southeastern U.S.[5][6][7] The common name loblolly is given because the pine species is found mostly in lowlands and swampy areas.[8] I've thought on and off about how to make these for sometime now but never came up with a good plan until I seen a video of a modeler who made some Birch trees for his layout recently using the typical Bottle Brush method. I thought to myself: "If I were to enlarge his birch trees and make them a different color, I think they'd be a pretty good match for the Loblollys ?" So I followed his instructions and this is what I came up with. Here's a few images of what I was aiming for. Here are three of them in the center of the image behind the real Whitewater bridge on Google Maps. I started with this. Wound up with this. Here are all ten of them, ready for planting. They wound up about 8" tall and about 3" in diameter The one unique thing he did was to melt white Crayola Crayons and applied them to the twisted wire trunks for his Birch Trees. Instead of white, I used Gray and Brown crayons for brownish trunk. I got a little too much brown, they need to grayer. It's a little hard to tell, but I applied a small amount of 2mm Static grass over the foam to simulate needles. If you want to see how I made these you can read the two blog posts I just uploaded. Loblolly Pines Loblolly Pines 2
Excellent work! Grant Eastman (known for the Southern Alberta Rail layout) used that crayon method for birch and aspen trees. Very effective.
Yes it is. That is where I got the idea from. I just didn't want to mention his name in case it wasn't kosher. I started with Brown, but didn't like the color of the brown, so I added some gray, next time I plan to add more gray as it's still too brown.
I got a few more tree planted in the Whitewater Creek scene today. A few minutes later I heard the SB Winnfield local coming, so I grabbed the camera.
Excellent work. That picture should be framed and hung on your wall in the train room! Amazing, it looks so real!
OK, I got the last batch of trees planted tonight. I kind of hurried things a bit as I want to get things wrapped up shortly as I may have a visitor arriving at the end of the month. I want to get the basement and layout cleaned up so things look halfway presentable. That means get the supplies put away, the layout cleaned off, the basement organized and the tracks cleaned so things can run. After planting the trees tonight I took a few images that show off the entire area that I've been working on. These were quick grabs so there are a lot of faults visible, such as all the loose foam floating on the creek and a few tools layout about. But hopefully it gives you the idea of the area. I am happy to say that I think this will act as decent view block between the towns of Fordyce and Haskell in the background. If you look close you can see the elevator at the Gavilon Feeds over the trees. When I get the time, I'll go back and restage the area to get some better shots.
You did a great job on that area, Allen. It wound up looking like a Southeast Arkansas creek bottom. The scene gives you a great place to take photos and provides a nice scenic divider between your different areas.