Building Scenes That Have Snow
It’s 8,300 feet in the Colorado high country. The old water tower just outside town is within a stone’s throw of a dilapidated old train station and a general store that’s only open on Tuesdays and Saturdays. You could say it’s a ghost town by most standards. Only forty people still live there.
Falling rocks on the tracks are commonplace. There are two tracks on a mountainside so steep it requires retaining walls to help hold them back. And today there’s another obstacle. Snow has fallen even though it’s June.
Welcome to the Colorado high country. It can be sunny and warm and within a couple hours it’s snowing. Spend much time in the Rocky Mountains, even in the summertime, and you’ll probably get snowed on. In fact, you can even ski all summer long in Colorado. Not at the usual ski resorts like Aspen, Vail and Steamboat Springs but at Saint Mary’s Glacier.
Saint Mary’s Glacier is a 10 acre snowfield at 11,000 feet near the Continental Divide, not too far from Georgetown and Idaho Springs, Colorado. There’s a sign directing the way off Interstate 70. You can’t miss it.
So it may be nice and warm in Denver and freezing in the high country only 75 miles away, all at the same time. That’s actually part of the beauty of the state.
So why should your layout be any different?
If you have a dramatic mountain scene, snow can be a really interesting addition. Maybe the lower elevations are warm and sunny, people are swimming and playing outside, while the higher elevations are snow covered.
Important: If you only have low level rolling hills on your layout, my recommendation is forget the snow. Otherwise you’ll have to cover everything with snow to make it look right.
I started with the foam insulation making a steep, rocky mountainside. This is the high country after all. Then I added some plaster soaked paper towels on part of the mountainside and I painted it flat black and primer gray.
Sculptamold makes the rocks extra rugged so I layered some Sculptamold on top of the painted plaster covered paper towels. This time I mixed the Sculptamold with Woodland Scenics Earth Colors (a mixture of Slate Gray and Stone Gray) and put that on the scene.
It’s the mixture of different rocky looks that makes the scene more eye appealing.
Add some Woodland Scenics Coarse Turf to the scene. Even though snow will eventually cover the scene, layers are still required. The Coarse Turf under the snow will give it a more realistic, three dimensional look.
The retaining walls were painted black and then with a little bit of light gray paint on the brush, lightly brush it over the walls to paint the high spots. Don’t paint over all the black. If you do it right it will look like real stones with dark shadows.
I painted the track bed flat black.
I sprinkled Woodland Scenics Fine Turf (Earth color) over the still wet black paint. This is an easy way to make the track bed look realistically dirty before I place the track back on the scene. Ballast can be added later for an even more realistic look.
Here’s the look so far.
The scene with a couple passing engines, a rare sight in these parts.
This time you can see some rolling stock. It’s morning and the sun is still shining. The temperature is in the mid 60s.
A couple hours later the trains are long gone, the sky turns gray and the snow falls.
The finished scene looks like this.
The light changes as the snow continues to fall.
It’s hard telling how long the snow will linger at this elevation. It could be days, even in June. Either way, the folks here know it’s only a matter of time before it snows again. The winters are long here. Snow is just a way of life in the Colorado high country.