How many have plaster work on their layouts

All the hills on my layout are made from Hydrocal Plaster.      Over the last 10 years, I did a lot of scenery work with extruded foam on a friends layout.     Both are very messy.    the plaster drips onto anything underneath, or gets hard on anything not masked.    The foam generates all kinds of small particles when you cut and shape it, and they are static charged so they are hard to pick up.     With the foam, we still had to put a coating of something over to get a smooth surface.

These were down with Plaster - this is O scale.

The following two are down with foam, on an HO layout.

The "mountain" in this lake scene was made from Hydrocal Plaster laid over a newspaper and cardboard base.

I did! But now I don't!

Better to use lightweight drywall compound ( sort of like plaster) over Styrofoam.

I build scenery using Sculptamold (a proprietary product much like paper mache) for shaping, then cover with a thick layer of plaster cloth (like they once  used for surgical casts). I then paint over with thin hydrocal to get a smooth surface.

Jan

I've used foam for large features. Plaster cloth for details. The plaster cloth needs to be covered with something to smooth it out. I use thinned joint compound applied with a brush.

I have used Sculptamold over plaster cloth over cardboard strips, but also tend to use carved closed cell foam. The first photo shows the plaster cloth/sculptamold, and the second shows some carved and painted foam.

I do for some rock outcrops but I just paint over Styrofoam with latex paint. I don't see any need to smooth it out. I use real dirt, leaf litter, and static grass from there. All of the scenery on my layout lifts out.

Wow, Christopher, that’s so realistic!

I only have about 800 lbs !

My kids will have 'fun' when I croak!

Base for scenery:

I just glue chunks of Styrofoam together with Great Stuff.... randomly in the general shape and coverage area I want; no sculpting or cutting or shaping; then add the lightweight joint compound with a spatula streak with a large plastic comb.

I use the green one.

then when the JT Compound is still a bit WET spray on Green and Gray spray paint; toss on grass and earth bits from Woodland Scenics. spray on slight black and gold to give it a nice reflective quality.

Then go to sleep.

@prrjim posted:

All the hills on my layout are made from Hydrocal Plaster.      Over the last 10 years, I did a lot of scenery work with extruded foam on a friends layout.     Both are very messy.    the plaster drips onto anything underneath, or gets hard on anything not masked.    The foam generates all kinds of small particles when you cut and shape it, and they are static charged so they are hard to pick up.     With the foam, we still had to put a coating of something over to get a smooth surface.

These were down with Plaster - this is O scale.

The following two are down with foam, on an HO layout.

Beautiful scenery. PrrJim, and I agree with you that both are messy.

I prefer using cardboard strips taped together and plaster cloth, with additional plaster added over it, instead of styrofoam.

I can understand why some prefer the styrofoam, but the little static particles that are generated by cutting it would drive me crazy.

My use of plaster on my layout is limited, very amateurish, and was done 25 years ago when I was a novice model railroader, but I had fun creating this plaster mountain with my young children at the time:

Arnold

I did plaster one time, never again.  Now just blue or pink styrofoam insulation panels , carved with hot wire carving cutting tools. Where are you getting little pieces of foam from ? Are using that white beed stuff ?

All my scenery lifts out in large sections, never know when I want to change something.

Clem, it's a long time ago, and I'm not sure, but I may have used white bead styrofoam, which I cut using a small hand saw. I did not use hot wire carving tools.

I used pink foam and then carved out with a steak knife and then painted with Latex paint. I did use a box of the white beaded foam from a delivery. Rock was carved to look like shale.

I went the old fashion way to create this mountain.

I used chicken wire fastened to a frame of 2x4s, 2x2s, and 2x1s.  I then then stuffed the holes in the chicken wire with balled up newspaper wads.  Finally draped wet plaster cloth over the paper wads.  Not too messy of a process.  

I use to have plaster on my first Lionel layout from the 1980's.

I also used it on my last layout from the late 90's.

havent used plaster in 30 years,  I use ultra lite spackle with foam sub  base

Forty years ago I used Sears Textured Paint, a powder that was mixed with water to make a paste was used to cover the aluminum screen wire.  Textured paint was used by painters to add swirls to ceilings to hide the tape seams and may not be available now but something similar should be available.

My mountain is still in good shape and has been on the layout for 30 years when it was portable and stored in the attic most of the time. Textured paint much lighter and easier to work with than plaster.  The few dings it has gotten have been repaired with Elmer's Glue-All and touch painted.  I have been very happy with my textured paint mountain.

Charlie

My mountain display behind the bridge is plaster of paris.      Most of the rock formations are from rubber molds.  It's a portable layout and the mountain is in 5 sections.           It's a zig zag ( switch back) horse trail starting at the lower right and ending upper left.