Many different scenic elements from fields to forests, hillsides, overpasses and so much more have and will be created as the layout progresses. Covering all of that in this page would be too much, but there are some common elements and techniques I can cover here.
First, most terrain features use extruded foam glued in place with carpenters yellow glue and then carved and roughly shaped with various tools to form the terrain shape. I then use joint compound over the carved foam to hide seams and create smoother transitions. Here is an example from recently shaping the terrain for route 27 to cross the tracks in Hampton, NH.
I then use the same brown base ground color before proceeding to ground cover.
Ground cover in all areas is mostly done using fine ground foam in different shades. I will generlly start with earth or sand shades depending on the area being created. Forests then receive limited amounts of green as well as various mixes of forest debris before adding trees. Farmland use more greens, but may use soil colors and get narrow furrows for plowed fields. The salt marshes along the coast received golden and straw colors followed by heavy application of similarly shaded static grass.
Paved roads on the layout are created using 0.06″ thickness styrene cut to the appropriate width for the road.
Detail pages of some of the specific scenic elements in each town will be covered in the future.