Scenery From the Ground Up -- Part 2

Having decided to keep the signal tower in its location at East Branch and the NP interchange, I have continued with the first layer of scenery around it. I started by modeling a wooden grade crossing for the driveway that accesses the tower. Then I created a gravel road as the driveway. Today, I expanded the sceniced area with more of the original grout ground cover. 

Knowing that I was going to create a gravel road, I decided on a rustic wooden grade crossing. I chose sixteen feet as an appropriate width for a one lane drive, particularly as that is a typical length of wooden planks. I had 1/8" X 1/8" and 1/32" X 1/8" strip wood on hand, and those sizes worked well with my flex track. Those sizes roughly represent 12" X 12" and 3" X 12" boards in HO scale. I cut them to length on my chopper and stained them with grimy black acrylic paint, thinned with 70% isopropyl alcohol. After they had dried I glued the thinner planks to the plastic ties with CA, and the two thicker boards were glued to the painted foam with Elmer's Glue-All. 

I am very happy how the grade crossing came together. The 1/32" board along the outer edge of the rail is super glued to the spike heads, angled up from the ties and butted up to the rail. Moving outward from the rail, the next 1/32" thick piece is superglued directly to the top of the ties. The outer board is one of the 1/8" square pieces, glued directly to the foam. The same pattern is repeated on the other side, outside the rail. Four of the thinner planks are super glued directly to the ties, between the spike heads, leaving room for the wheel flanges. This combination appears to work really well, leaving room for the rolling stock to move through the crossing without problems. 

The next step was to attempt to model a gravel road with sanded grout. I used the 09 Natural Gray color of Polyblend Plus and Woodland Scenics' fine gray ballast blended together while still dry. Following the same method of painting on thinned white glue, tapping a spoon of the grout mixture over the glue, and then eyedroppering alcohol as a wetting agent followed by dripping on scenic cement described in the earlier post I created a somewhat soupy mess. Tapping on a bit more of the grout mix and some straight ballast on the wettest parts firmed up the road. While it was drying I used a sacrificial HO vehicle to form some tread marks (perhaps a little too deep) and then let it dry. A final step after the roadway had dried was to sand the crossing planks that had been stained by the scenic cement with 320 grit sandpaper. 

Earlier today, I expanded the area with the first layer of scenery to the east of the gravel drive and to the east along the back berm. A repeat of the same process with more of the original mix of both colors of sanded grout and some filtered sand from the tube sand. Yes, it is rather barren looking without additional greenery and details. That said, I am really liking the sanded grout as a first layer. It provides some texture and color that is closer to scale than the ground goop I have used in the past. I also like the wooden grade crossing, which fortuitously came together easily as a mini-scratchbuilding project.