Tree Construction

Many people have asked me how I made my trees so I decided to create a description page.  I hope it helps.  Since I wanted the look of a back-woods branch line I knew I would need lots of trees.  There are many great looking tree model for large scale, but big$$.  I found these miniature Christmas trees at a craft store for 50 cents.  They are about 10" tall.  I bought several and experimented.  After I "planted a few" I decided to take this route.  I went back to the store and bought all they had in stock.  I have made over 60 trees to date and have enough raw material for another 60.  Here are the steps to my trees.

  1. Shape the tree by unfolding the branches.  (they come compressed)
  2. With a wire cutter thin out the tree.  Look at trees in nature, they are random shaped and vary in density.  When pruning, be aggressive.  The thinner trees look more to scale.
  3. The most time consuming part is trimming all the fronds.  To make the tree look more in scale I cut each branch almost to the wire.   Sometimes it takes several passes to get all the branches.
  4. Once the shape is set, I hot glue the foliage into a piece of  mulberry branch.  The bark of the mulberry looks in scale to me, plus I like the color.  Any trunk would do.  I vary the height of the trunks from 5 to 15".  This gives me plenty of variation plus I like the look of a large scale shay gliding between tall trees.
  5. Last step is to hot glue a 16p finishing nail into the bottom.  This creates a planting spike.
    6.

Fresh from the craft store   Mini Christmas tree

"Pruning" the branches to make the tree armature look more realistic.  Nature is very random so make sure that form is irregular.

Cut the "fronds" down almost to the wire

Group of new trees being tested for location on a soon to be scenicked portion of the East end.       

Note super-elevation of track with cork roadbed.