It may be snowing outside but it's always summer in Mina County!

So today I'm off from school because Mother Nature decided to throw a Snowpocalypse at us.  Gave me a chance to spend three hours with my dad in his basement.  He has done a lot of work lately, rearranging a few of the tracks and redoing the topography in those areas.  We also started work on a swamp between our two stone trestles.  So here are some photos from today's labors!

First, here is the swamp area.  Foam cutouts were placed for higher terrain where dead trees and clumped grass might be found.  We put a few cattails (bottom) and grass (top).  The grass is too high, I will trim it when the glue dries to hold it in place.  The foam is beveled using an Xacto knife.

 Area around some of the revised track.  Notice the small building and the complexity of the terrain?  A combination of foam and Fusion Fiber make the terrain what it is.

 A ridgeline dividing two sets of tracks.

 Here my dad applies glue to the substrate to put in the texturing material.

Another small vignette of an area we've been working on slowly but surely.

A fresh blob of Fusion Fiber (colored with equal parts yellow, green and brown acrylic paint) sets the slope for this little bit of scenery.

My father applying glue to this area:

 Applying the texturing:

Building the texturing up layer by layer:

 That's it for today until it dries.  Shrubs, trees and more to follow. 

Another new section between the tracks!

Finally, here's an area I've been working on...I'm not satisfied with the paint job and will be going back over it with diluted black to give it some character.  I use all Woodland Scenics pigments to color my cliffs. The cliff itself is carved from pink insulation foam with a Hot Wire Foam Factory hot knife and then painted with gypsum, then colored.  None of this is molded, it's all hand-carved.  Same goes over the tunnel entrance.