Enhancing the Winter Diorama, Part 1
Last year I built a winter diorama to have a nice display for Christmas. I think a model winter landscape is a fun way of displaying trains in the holiday season.
The back side of the station did not really have a realistic landscape. I wanted to change that.
I never really liked the way the backside of the station house turned out. It did not seem realistic and I wanted to do some more. Thankfully the winter diorama was built using the technique of foam sheets, newspaper wads and plaster, which makes it really easy to change should you ever want to do so.
For this installment I will show you how I took away the part of the landscape that I did not like, and added a flat surface for the new station square with a parking lot.
Removing The Old Landscape
This process is the messy one. Since I was using plaster cloth (Woodland Scenics #C1203) it was quite easy to cut the part of the landscape away. Simply use a knife and cut a hole in the plaster, tear the plaster away a long with the landscape. Easy!
The plaster cloth is gone, and you can see the foam sheets underneath.
With the plaster cloth gone, I could start on building the new foundation for the parking lot. Because there is a difference in height, I had to add additional height to the surrounding landscape to bring it into level with the station warehouse.
Scrap foam sheet is used to bring the parking lot up to the same height as the station house foundation.
I used scrap pieces of foam sheet to bring the parking lot up to about the same height as the station house foundation. This will create a level surface for the parking lot. I then used Foam Putty (Woodland Scenics #ST1447) to fill in the gaps and create a smooth transition to the remaining scenery.
Foam Putty is great for filling in the gaps when you use scrap foam pieces.
The station parking lot is now level and the Foam Putty is drying.
I also used Foam Putty to form the foundation of the road that is leading towards the parking lot. Foam Putty is great for this purpose.
When Foam Putty has dried it will have the same consistency as foam. You can sand it with a sanding block or some fine sanding paper. This way the surface will be smooth and ready for the new plaster cloth to be added.
In the next part the parking lot will take shape.
Happy Modelling!