Turfed

If you remember the back story for Jerusalem started with the following mumbo jumbo

It's 1955 and little Johnny has borrowed his Dad's camera for a day of trainspotting. He isn't expecting to see much as the sleepy branch-line near where he lives isn't exactly a hive of activity. Having settled himself on a sunny bank it isn't long before the distinctive sound of a hard working steam engine echos down the valley and within a few minutes the train emerges from under the nearby road bridge and into view. A quick press of the shutter and Johnny captures for posterity the first visit of the newly built 82026 to his sleepy corner of England.

At the time I didn't even have a track plan and certainly not a working layout and so I illustrated the post with a black and white photo of the locomotive and bridge just sat on my desk. Well here is the current state of play which I think is a much better match to the description.

The photo is straight from the camera without any digital messing about, which shows how even with the slightly large clouds everything comes together quite nicely. As you can see so far I've only worked on the area to the right of the road, and even then it is only turf and so looks more like a nicely mown lawn than naturally occurring grass. It will look more natural when I bring out the electrified tea strainer!

In case you are interested all the materials, but one, used to create the grass came from the Woodland Scenics landscape learning kit, but so that I don't forget exactly what was used the full list is:

• Green Blend Blended Turf
• Medium Green Coarse Turf
• Medium Green Clump-Foliage
• Yellow Flowering Foliage (this wasn't in the kit)