9.1 Scenery: Rock Faces
On 29 August 2020, I went to work on the rock face at the lower left corner of the layout. This involved installing a single strip of Cripplebush Valley rubber rock, with some bits of Chooch retaining wall added in the areas where the rock dips below the track grade above it.
The area around the water tower got some added detail in the form of wooden retaining walls.
Then I filled in the gaps and created the final land contours with pre-colored, pre-mixed sanded grout, which has a number of advantages over my "normal" favorite, Sculptamold: most notably, since it's pre-mixed, I can use as much or as little as I need, from a cup to a thimbleful, with zero waste, and it's always ready to use. In fact, it really has only one disadvantage: it dries very hard! That makes modifications after the fact rather difficult. But for mini-layouts such as this, that hasn't been much of a problem.
The following morning I painted the rock faces with Floquil Primer Grey, then applied an India ink wash to get a feel for the final effect.
Unfortunately, because of the compressed nature of the layout, I had to rely on rock faces more than I'd have preferred; on the plus side, they do have a lot of character. On 19 October 2020, I installed a rock face along the road leading to the abandoned stone arch road bridge and the open deck pony truss road bridge (below, right).
Reference Images
I grew up—and still live—in New Jersey, a land of layered, sedimentary rock, whereas New Hampshire is well and truly the "Granite State." Look at those massive, chunky rock forms—no flakey slate here!
