My favorite trees, at my favorite cost (basically free)
California is full of oak trees. I grew up exploring these hills, so I guess I have an affinity for them. Fortunately, modeling a home town railroad means modeling home town scenery, so I will have a layout covered in these trees. I don't know the actual special of these oak trees, but I took these pictures of the hillsides that surround the Salinas Valley, home to the PVCRR.
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These hills are located to the south west of the Spreckels Sugar Refinery.
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Even the sparse hillside above has about a dozen trees of various sizes. While it would be possible to purchase premade trees for a scene like this, the cost would be considerable. Even kit trees, while less expensive, would still be costly.
A few years back, I discovered an online tutorial for making what I consider high quality, very inexpensive, oak trees. Rather than steal the content, I'll link to the video -
M.C. Fujiwara created a very detailed, professional, tutorial on how to make oak trees from stranded electrical wire, sawdust, poly fill, and ground cover. I had all of this on hand, in some for or another, so I imagine you might as well. The link above takes you to the abridged version, there is also a longer three part series that goes into more detail. From what I can tell, he lives in California, so I feel comfortable using his method while making my mighty oaks.
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An oak tree I made following the tutorial above.
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