Hill Construction for Model Train Layouts

"On behalf of Expert Village my name is Bob Lanning. I'm here to tell you about making a train diorama in HO scale. One way to make hills is by using this pink or blue foam which is a construction insulation material. You can stack it up in various ways as I've done here, or it can be carved with a hot knife, they make a hot wire material, tool that you use to carve the foam. And, when you're ready you can cover it with the sculpta mold plaster or this plaster cloth, which I've used here, and then paint on your dirt color, and actually sprinkle real, you can buy fine sand, or use whatever dirt's right outside your house and sprinkle on there. And then, you put on your shrubbery and your various scenery material to represent the colors that you wish to represent the area you're trying to show. This is showing how to use crumpled newspaper. And, you can hardly go wrong, no matter how you do it, once you lay over the plaster cloth, you get a very good mixture of shapes, that show hills and valleys and little cliffs maybe, and then you paint it, after the plaster cloth has dried, and then again, you sprinkle on your materials, right on top of the paint. I've show here all colors, you can buy different colors of green, different colors of grass, there's fine, there's coarse grasses. Here I've shown yucca plants which are made out of various things you can find in a floral shop."