Scenery

Papier-mache has been used over a chicken-wire frame to create hills and mountains for almost as long as the hobbies have existed, and it does a great job too, providing a hard shell on which you can apply paint and add scatter to give a realistic...

A static mainline is a dummy mainline track on a viaduct or embankment that spans the width of a smallish baseboard. It is used as a scene-break to hide the other side of the baseboard, but, as it doesn't go anywhere, it's generally not...

'Profiles' are a part of the skeleton that you would build when creating a model hill on your layout. Specifically, profiles are the vertical supports on top of which you would likely place a lattice of card strips, plaster cloth or other such...

There are several ways to construct hills on your layout. The 'hard shell' method consists of making a hard, hollow, hill-shaped shell that can be decorated with grass scatter, trees and bushes. The resulting model will be both lightweight and...

Shaper sheets are a material used to create self-supporting hills or terrain on a model railway layout or other dioramas. Depending on whether they are used in conjunction with a hard top surface they can form either hard or soft shell landscapes....

When modellers use the expression 'anchoring a scene' what they are doing is finding a way to make their scene portray a certain era or location. This is done using a combination of appropriate models, landscape, liveries, architecture or...

Perspective is something we see every day out there in the real world. A tree in the far distance, for example, will appear very small, despite it being as large as a tree close by. Our brains know this, but, our brains can also be easily tricked...

Seafoam trees are a natural product for modelling trees in any gauge between OO and Z.Seafoam comes from a plant that grows in such a way that it closely resembles tree structures. Seafoam can be used straight from the box to represent the...

In modelling, scatter is a general term used to describe any scenic material that is fine enough to be sprinkled onto a diorama.There are many different kinds of scatter available with a multitude of textures and colours to represent a range...

Choosing trees can be difficult for wargamers as many are sold with either a cautious suggestion of a model railway gauge (which means little to anyone other than a railway modeller) or worse still, no indication of scale at all!That may seem...

One of the most common scatter-related questions asked in model shops around the world is - How much do I need? And that's a fair question, after all, you need to know how much to purchase, one bag? two? ten? It's almost impossible to guess when...

A briar patch is a thicket formed from thorny plants and can often be found growing in abandoned or derelict sites as well as by the side of railway lines in more rural areas.Because it's such a common feature, briar patches are often modelled...