Scenic Express - Supertrees

Over the last few days I have been adding some better looking foreground trees to the WRD. Here we see my first ever Supertree. My second attempt is seen behind the Petersburg station. It turns out they are a lot easier to make than one would think.

If you follow Marty McGuirk's Central Vermont Railway blog he has been working and posting about his scenery lately. His photos gives one a good look at his really nice looking trees. Marty's work has motivated me to get going on replacing some of my own foreground trees with Supertrees. I do have some nice goldenrod trees up front, but have put off adding better looking realistic trees for years. I purchased a Scenic Express Supertree starter kit a couple of years ago. Not sure why it has taken me this long to get it open and in use. The products included in this kit gives me a cost effective way to get all the stuff I would need over the long run to build some good looking trees. I did purchase some extra leaf flocking to get the colour I wanted. The kit comes with limited limbs. I will have to purchase additional Supertree limbs that come in big bags at some point.

Currently my layout has way too many trees to count. For the amount of trees I needed to build cost-wise Supertrees was not an option. For background one does not need detailed trees, just lots of trees to emulate New England. I have tried to keep the background simple and non-detailed so the foreground details and trains pops out. I began with sky blue on the wall than distant gray hills painted on followed by Masonite mountain flats painted green and covered in ground foam. I then planted thousands of small tree made from goldenrod covered in green paint and Woodland ground foam. In the mix is about 8-9 hundred N scale evergreen trees. Foreground trees are the better and bigger goldenrod trees with a few dollar store Christmas Evergreens painted and covered in ground foam. The background trees took a full modeling season (all winter long) to build. Everything else for that season was put on hold while I got my trees planted. I am sure glad that is over with...guess that's why it took so long to open the Supertrees box...George

A Supertree is added to the front edge of the layout, replacing one made from goldenrod. I will be adding a second one here but with much more green in the mix.

Here we see almost everything that is included in the Supertrees starter kit. The four tweezers are actually being put to work at the time the photo was taken. If one was to purchase all the items needed to get going building trees it would cost twice the price of the kit. The Supertrees included was enough to plant about 12 really nice large trees and over a dozen smaller ones. There are lots of leftovers for shrubs. I barely put a dent into the flocking included and I have enough matte medium for hundreds of future trees.

I have been using two tones of Noch leaf flocking from Scenic Express for fall foliage. Don Janes and I actually split on two shakers so that is why one colour is in a baggy. The two colours we are using for our brighter fall foliage trees are those suggested by Marty McGuirk,  NH07156 Autumn Orange and NH07157 Harvest Red. I can't see myself having to buy any more flocking for years with these two packages and what was included in the starter kit.

I added this good looking Supertree out back of the Westboro sandhouse. It is in full foliage colour using two shades of Noch flocking.