Click for larger picture(c) Robert Morris | A few years ago during the first week of September, I was driving north on Interstate 5, north of Shasta Lake (just south of the railroad town of Dunsmuir), when I caught sight of Castle Crag. |
Castle Crag is a dramatic outcropping of white granite peaks, jutting out of dense forest, along the top of a mountain ridge, resembling the towers of a castle. The sight takes your breath away. The setting was even more dramatic as two SD-45 Union Pacific diesel locomotives broke the silence, pulling a mile-long freight along the base of the mountain.
Mountains on your garden railroad can add a realistic dimension and backdrop for your trains while adding a wide range of opportunities to add special effects to your layout. Mountains on my garden railroad have enabled me to add tunnels, trestles, waterfalls, streams, mining operations, mine shafts, forests, hillside cabins, landslides, and trains to change elevation by climbing and descending grades and crossovers.
The most extensive use of mountains in a SoCalGRS garden railroad I've seen is Debra and Brian Montoya's, "Chino Hills Unlimited Mountain Pike Railway." Their layout is nothing short of spectacular.
Click for larger picture |
Click for larger picture |
Click for larger picture | 
Click for larger picture |
Five Swiss passenger and freight trains travel on over 550 feet of track skillfully woven around, through, and over 8-foot high mountains made to resemble the Alps in southern Germany and northern Switzerland. Alpine lakes, viaducts, waterfalls and streams, made the mountains come to life. In addition, there is a 100-foot long cog railroad that climbs from ground level to one of the peaks.
Mountains can also be used to conceal your railroad's operations. A large mountain was constructed for The Living Desert garden railroad in Palm Desert to house a workshop and roundhouse. The thick cement covering the mountain provided insulation from the hot sun keeping the workshop and trains cool. Unless you are fortunate enough to have a natural mountainside in your backyard, you will have to create your own mountains for your garden railroad. I learned how to make mountains out of ... from trial and humorous error. In this article, I will discuss natural resources for making mountains, plaster and concrete mountains, as well as foam and resin mountains.
Option 1: Natural Resources
Click for larger picture Then I headed to my local building suppliers and rock yards to check out what rocks would be appropriate. There was a wide range of rocks to choose from. I laid the rocks out according to their placement on the layout. I only purchased a few rocks at a time. When the building supplier found out I was building a garden railroad, they gave me a great deal on my purchases and sometimes did not charge me at all.
Click for larger pictureAnd, when I told them I wanted to sweep up the rock debris from the type of rock I wanted (fills joints and areas along tracks), they were happy to oblige (and thought I was a little strange). I especially liked flat granite paving stones and turned them on their sides (matching angles) to use as sheer walls of cliffs.
I then filled in behind the rocks with soil and topped with decomposed granite (known as "DG"). When DG gets wet, it dries almost as hard as concrete and makes realistic ballast (a 60-lb bag of DG only costs four bucks and I always try to keep a bag on hand). Another great source of natural rock is stream beds.
The areas surrounding Santa Clarita, Newhall, Bouquet Canyon, Santa Anita Canyon and the San Bernardino Mountains, are great sources for free rock. Over the years, I have also collected handfuls of rocks from places I have visited, including railroad roadbeds, that have been placed around my layout.
Option II: Concrete Mixtures
Each of the three mountains on my garden railroad serves a number of purposes. They form the backdrop for a mining area, a forest, two cascading waterfalls, ridge lines and cliffs joined by three trestles, and a means to hide electrical wiring and provide for four tunnels. Two of the mountains were constructed with concrete mixtures and the other combining rocks and concrete.
Concrete mountains, next to the use of rock, are fairly cheap to make. However, if you decide to construct your mountains out of concrete, remember concrete mixtures require planning, patience and imagination. Let's discuss how I emulated the techniques of my fellow garden railroaders, which resulted in a failure and success. Here are two concrete techniques:On my railroad, PRESSURE TREATED 4X6 INCH POSTS (three feet in length), were sunk in the ground with POST HOLE CONCRETE, to form a base for railroad track and serve as a solid object to nail metal lath to.
The METAL LATH ($2.98 for a 4X8 foot piece cut to your desired size with tin snips...wear gloves because the lath is extremely sharp and not forgiving), was nailed, rough side out, to the posts. In some places, I hammered the metal lath over rocks I especially liked, and then nailed the lath to posts. A thin coating of PORTLAND PLASTIC CEMENT ($5.15 for a 94 lb bag), was spread onto the lath, like putting icing on a cake.
The first time I tried this, I substituted fast setting QUIKRETE for the Portland Cement, and before I could spread on a square foot of concrete, my trowel and hoe, used to mix the concrete, were permanently stuck in the container I used to mix the concrete. I just muttered to myself as my neighbors rolled on their lawns in hysterics at my blunder.
After going back to PORTLAND "sloooowwwww drying" cement, I even added a few real rocks to the scene. Once the cement dried, LATEX outdoor brown paint made the cliffs and artificial rock formations on my mountains come to life (Save the can of paint to repaint the cliffs and mountain periodically).
Here are some pictures and ideas
Click for larger picture | This concrete mountain serves as a backdrop for an Indian cliff dwelling along the route of the Living Desert Railroad in Palm Desert. The mountain also hides an unsightly work area. |
Click for larger picture | Sections of REBAR can be cut, bent, and wired together to form the desired shape of a mountain range. The framework will then be covered with METAL LATH (rough side up that is tied with wire to the framework). The lath is then contoured with a rubber mallet or hammer before a coat of concrete is applied. Outdoor LATEX paint adds color and life to the scene. |
On the Living Desert Railroad, 3/8 inch REBAR (iron), was bent into a desired shape and each end was then hammered 18 inches into the ground. Additional rods of REBAR were added cross-ways and fastened to the base REBAR with 20-gauge wire. Metal lath was then added and secured to the REBAR with wire. The lath was hammered into shape with a rubber mallet. A scratch coat of sand and plastic sand (mixed in a ratio of 2 scoops of sand to one scoop of cement into a substance resembling toothpaste), was then spread onto the lath with a trowel. As the scratch coat began to dry, a small rake was used to scratch the surface of the cement (this provides a surface for the next coat to adhere to).
After drying for a day or so, a final coat of cement (this time using Silica Sand instead of regular sand), was mixed according to the aforementioned ratio, was spread onto the first coat with a trowel. To add color to the topping, a wide range of cement colors can be added to the mix or a mixture of colors can be sprinkled on.
The finished surface can then be painted with outdoor LATEX paint.
Both techniques will produce mountains so strong you can stand on them, and they will last a lifetime. Remember, in your planning stage, waterfalls, streams, and other special effects, must be added as you progress with the building of your mountains. Otherwise, the only way to add special effects will be to take a sledge hammer to whatever you just created. I know firsthand, my sledge hammer was used extensively.
Option III: Geodesic Foam SceneryI love trains shows. They give me a firsthand chance to spend as much time as I want to look around and see and touch new garden railroad products. And, if I can't decide what I really need, there are plenty of shows spaced throughout the year, so when I do decide to purchase an item, I will have that chance.
For instance, during the Big Train Show at the Queen Mary last June, I was fascinated by a method for making mountains out of foam and resin, developed and marketed by Joel and Jenny Bragdon, doing business as Bragdon Enterprises of Georgetown, California. They call their product, "Geodesic Foam Scenery," and advertise it as being realistic, lightweight, durable, and easy to make.
I still was a little skeptical and purchased one of their videos to take a closer look.
After viewing the tape, I had some more questions and made an inquiry through their website, www.bragdonent.com. The web-site lets you see all of their products. And, the "instructions" section of the website, demonstrates the entire step-by-step process to build mountains and scenery with photographs. I had a few more questions and Joel promptly responded back to me with all kinds of ideas on how I could proceed with whatever project I decided to attempt.
Besides SoCalGRS, I am also a member of the Del Oro Pacific Modular Railroad club. For those of you unfamiliar with Del Oro, it is a club that promotes large scale railroading utilizing over 100 table-sized modules that are assembled together to form a giant train layout.
Two parallel main line tracks carry freight and passenger trains through cities, farms, industrial areas, Indian country, forests, deserts, parks, and more. There is even a huge rail yard for storing, assembling, and dispatching trains to the main lines. What has brought prestige to club is the scenery, structures, and trains that roll along the tracks.
Members have created interactive park settings, an oil refinery, baseball game, and an Indian village with dancers, locomotive repair shop, hoists, lumber mill, Chicago's famed elevated railway, train stations, junk yards, and much more. The layout is set up for many of the train shows around southern California.
After each show, I, like many members of Del Oro, kick around ideas of new effects that could be added to the layout. A new module I envisioned involved having the main lines cross over trestles above a river fed by a waterfall cascading down from a mountain. To further entice me to make this vision a reality, Ted Greeno constructed a special module that would enable me to do it. Fellow SoCalGRS and Del Oro member Jeff Schultz of BridgeMasters then kicked in two of his realistic trestles and bents to bridge the main lines over the proposed riverbed. Now all I needed to do was build it. First, I went to the Internet and searched photos of waterfalls and mountains. Then I ordered up the materials from Bragdon Enterprises.
Click for larger picture | Making mountains out of foam and resin began with these two empty plywood modules clamped back-to-back (a crate is holding up the back section). |
Click for larger picture | The mountain on the back module was framed with strips of cardboard glued together with a hot glue gun. Each step in the process of making foam and resin mountains, is explained in simple steps by Joel Bragdon in his video and in instruction sheets that accompany the materials ordered. |
Click for larger picture | This photo depicts the polyurethane foam and bubble wrap which will be the foundation for the mountain, waterfalls and cliffs. As you apply each sheet, and glue it down with a hot glue gun, you can easily shape the contours you want before the sheets dry. The upper mountain slightly overlaps the bottom mountain. |
Click for larger picture | You can purchase rock castings that match the kind of surface or appearance you want in your project. Before each casting dries, it can be worked into almost any position and then glued down with a hot glue gun. The surfaces are then prepped with white Gesso paint which serves as a primer. |
Click for larger picture | Various colors of tempra (powder form) paint (black and green), were dusted onto the rocks with a dry paint brush. Black was primarily used with the green being added to the waterfall areas. A wet sponge is then used to wipe the powder down to adhere to the surfaces. The tempra paint really added depth and texture to the castings. I then added ballast and Talus (rock debris), trees, old planks of wood, firewood, and a hobo encampment under the trestles, complete with a flickering fire and tent with a flickering fire and tent with a lantern lit |
I put a TV and VCR in my workshop so I could visually follow the directions step-by-step. Once I got the hang of it, and stopped burning my fingers with the hot glue gun, the entire process was much easier than I envisioned and the results were beyond what I imagined (see photos and captions).
The project took a few weeks and I set out to do what I wanted for just under $300 which included all the materials, glue sticks, paints, tubing, pump, wiring and special effects (water re-circulating over the waterfalls, a hobo camp under the trestles with a smoking log fire, and three pine trees). I hope you will drop by the Del Oro exhibit at one of the upcoming train shows and see for yourself how great Geodesic Foam Scenery can be. The best part of the three options I have presented here is that they all work together. You can mix and match and use the one that will best suit your needs. If you have created some of your own mountains, please take some pictures of them and upload them to the LSOL picture archives so we can all see your handy work. Till next time.
Top of Page
