After six years the Lower Bear Creek double bridge scene is nearly complete!

I spent a bunch of time lately watching YouTube videos on how to paint scenery. Not model railroad scenery but highly detailed/artistic landscape painting. My favorite channels for this are

• Check Black Art
• U.V.N Art
• Michael James Smith

Each of these channels features a highly talented artist's tutorials and demonstrations.

I practiced painting trees on small el cheapo canvases before trying my hand on the railroad backdrop. To date, I've painted portions of the area behind the Lower Bear Creek scene and have started experimenting with more detailed backdrops over in the Junction City area.

In addition to backdrop painting I also needed to prep the creek bed and pour it with Envirotex Lite, ballast track, and plant lots of vegetation.

These shots show the area with vegetation, creek details, (plastic) water, and ballast (except for the abutments of the upper bridge - once these are ballasted the bridge will not be readily removable and I'm not ready for a permanent bridge in that location yet - the bridges need weathering, too - another reason to keep them removable).

Scenery textures include of Woodland Scenics Folliage CLusters, SilFlor grass mat, static grass, ground foam, Paver Sand, ballast from Smith & Sons, and Arizona Rock & Mineral. Trees so far are conifers; a combination of a few Canyon Creek Scenics, Heiki small bottle-brush trees augmented with black paint and additional ground foam, and a bunch of home-made trees featuring chop-stick and bamboo skewer trunks.

It was an epic battle, but it's almost done (and just in time for the January op session!). Let's look at some photos.