I am an 88 year old man who started building models a long time ago. I have been doing it off and on over a span of 75 years. My first layout was like many others a circle of Lionel around the tree at Christmas time. I quickly switched to HO scale after being exposed to it by the train magazines of the time. I wish I still had the stack of magazines that I had accumulated back in the 1940's/1950's. Hind sight was not something I possessed. I had an MGTD, a 1959 Karmann Ghia and a1962 21 window VW bus with a sliding roof. These cars were cheap when I bought them new. They can bring 5,6 figures today. So much for hind sight. Back to model railroading. As I said, it was an off and on interest with segments of interest ranging from photography, work, sports, education, music tossed in between the railroading interests. I always had an interest in trains and all it would take would be to see a model layout somewhere, like on TV or in a magazine in the doctor's office to generate a renewed interest. Well now 88 years later, being retired for 20 years now, I have come around full circle (actually 350 degrees) and back building a model railroad. This time I'm using Marklin as I'm not steady enough to build from scratch. Although I have always had an interest in trains, my skill level was not on a par with the fantastic layouts I see on the Internet, U-tube and magazines. I believe seeing those fantastic layouts, like Miniature Wunderland in Hamburg has discouraged me, as I know I can't possibly do as good.
My difficulty these days is and has always been scenery and landscaping. I have made a little progress with my present layout through reading up on the subject. I think this is an area that others find difficult to master. I am at the stage now where scenery and landscape needs to be addressed. My approach is to experiment by building a small diorama and trying all methods to produce a pleasing and reproducable diorama. After I am satisfied with the results, I will then introduce it to my full layout. The sand is running out of my hour glass so I have to complete the last and most difficult part of building a model railroad layout. I know there are a lot of "old timers" around my age with model railroading interests and I hope this will help those who need help with the greatest hobby past time. I've lost a lot of valuable time thinking about how to do it and it is now time to s*** or get off the pot.

Hello Mr. Ron,
Landscaping can be easier than we think nowadays with many pre-built items, like trees, grass mats, rocks, bushes and flowers and the like. Some of the work is more a matter of curating which items you want to place where, depending on the complexity you desire. If you can have a photo posted or explain in more detail a particular landscaping issue you wish to address, I would be happy to suggest something. Many sections can be removable as you suggest.

Below I have posted a removable mountain in its building stage that was part of our 5'x3' exhibition layout that we took to shows. All of our models would be removed and put into boxes, along with rolling stock and automobiles. Your miniature people aka Preiserlings, are easily glued into position with a dab of white Elmer's or carpenters glue.
With the image above you see the paint in small containers were it is diluted to be sponged on with a technique that Woodland Scenics calls "leopard spotting". I chose to make a drip of rust from an ore deposit. Put the 'colours' on first with some brown, rust, grey, then a dark wash over everything to blend it all together. With sponging the dark colours over plaster—or in this case woodland scenics lightweight hydrocal; nice and light for removable sections—it should be well diluted. All the colours should be diluted and the bottles I used said a suggested ratio but I forget now, something like 1:10 maybe, you can experiment on a small section. I will look that up later if anyone requests. I went over several times until the colour washed altogether or until I liked the blending. The water paint runs down the surface gets into all the cracks of the 'rock' and, of course, drips on the table or onto your drop cloth. With a higher concentration of paint in the cracks and joints the rock shape is accentuated and stands out. When constructing the rock surface, there are rock mold that can be used. And I also glued on natural cork marketed for MMR work acquired from a bag that must have been from the 50s or 60s; I then covered that with my 'plaster', the hydrocal. Martin from Sweden also has a youtube tutorial on this using bark. Explaining backwards... but clearly after that the sponge painting was applied.


You can see some details of it below for you to get an idea of how the detail might work.


This lonely woman found it worthwhile to look out over the small town near the edge of the "mountain" cliff.


These climbers visiting from Nochlandia were convinced the rock was the real thing and decided to climb. As long as they enjoy their climb, I am content with the result. Although perhaps a few bushes for berries for them to snack on while climbing would add a bit more colour to the barren grey.
IMG_1754.png (10,203kb) downloaded 12 time(s).

There are products that simulate water as in this flooded ditch along the tracks where a few ducks have taken up residence. This was a rather old set of Faller resin water and worked perfectly. Caveat: make sure where you are pouring is sealed so the resin is not wasted down a hole. Some of mine leaked through and ended up looking like solidified maple syrup after being poured on snow. Except that is was on a wood work surface and stayed there a few years. You see here differently coloured and kinds of vegetation that can be glued on in clumps or from stretchy stuff spread out like creeping rhizomes; which I also like for making vines on rock walls or up catenary posts or even on the lines themselves.

Let some rock and earth show through the vegetation in spots. Tilled/wet earth can be simulated by a darker brown. To apply the plant matter diluted white glue does the trick and dries matt and invisibly.


For a little water fall from the stream, there is a product Woodland Scenics makes which I found works very well. The trick is to make it on a separate surface you can peel it off from and then glue it from the top. Remember water falls one point and does not stick to the surface of the rock. Dale noted this on Mixmox, an excellent blog worth visiting. (I wish he was still around the forum... )


Finally placing people and animals in a scene takes a bit of play. My daughters came up with this scene with me. A girl named Anna is returning home from school and her dog Kenta runs down the path to great her while one of the geese honk a welcome to her. Her mother and her namesake Tante Joanna are working in the strawberry patch. They are planting lasercut strawberry plants recently acquired from Noch-landia (i think). All of these scenes with be removed and incorporated into our new layout, so the work is not lost entirely when doing a layout redesign.


Hope all this helps and wish you the best of luck diving into it. There is no one right method, just have fun. The gluing on of people and plants and objects is easy and fun to do with other family members giving input. Much of that was done by my daughters under direction when they were pre-teens.

Small segments or modules is a great way to go imho.
Cheers
Mark

Thank you all for your help. I just don't have an artistic bone in my body. I think I will begin with a background scene and tweek it as I go along. I'm looking at sample scenes from the internet, trying to "feel" the wanted scene. Town scenes don't bother me too much; it's just the "nature" scenes that gives me trouble.

One thing to remember is that although you may have an idea of what you want the scenery to look like, don't get too worried if it doesn't turn out exactly what you were expecting - there will be an example of whatever end result you get somewhere in the world.