Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[TMo]

I'll probably pick up that loco on Monday, Tom and I'll take plenty of pictures.  Until then, back to the south-facing side of Mud Run.

I figured that the south face would have a decent amount of flora - it doesn't take much dirt to allow something to grow on that rocky slope, and if there is some sun, stuff will grow.  I started to plop some smallish shrubs on the rock face spaced sporadically - and that's just what it looked like - it did not look natural.

   

I experimented with some polyfil stretched to a gauzy film, but I thought, close up, this is just going to look like polyfil.

Then I looked back at my moss experiment and looked at my initial pile of cut moss material in the white plastic tray in the photo above from 1/15 and thought - "I really like that look".  Multiple colors and textures, and the individual "plants would be about the right size for what I was looking to create.  Only trouble was that I'd taken the stuff that was in that tray and cut it up until it was suitable for the moss I applied on the north side of Mud Run - I didn't have that material anymore, but I could create a new stock of it without too much trouble.  Thus armed with a decent pile after about 15 minutes of cutting, I applied some areas of the rock with a liberal amount of glue and forced my plants into the glued areas.


   

Did some cleanup to get the stray plants off of the tracks and ties, ran some trains through the area to see if I got some snagging.  Did a bit of trimming, and I think we'll now transition efforts to weathering and ballasting track tomorrow.