Yarrowee River

Yarrowee River runs in a westerly direction through Ballarat East turning south at Eastern Park, where it enters a tunnel to go underneath Ballarat railyards and Ballarat CBD emerging 500m to the south (near Eastwood St).  

The embankment is made from extruded polystyrene foam covered with papier-mache and a thin layer of plaster. It's then painted (with household paints) and covered with dyed sawdust, real dirt and sand, ground foam and natural materials collected from the garden.

 

The pipe is formed from a drinking straw with pins used to create the barrier to prevent the pipe from being climbed on.  I’m not sure of the pipe’s purpose (most likely a water main), although it provides a good foreground feature.

 

I didn’t have any reference photo’s of the portal where the creek goes under the railyard.  I therefore used a photo of the subway which is situated a 150m to the east, assuming that they would have been built at a similar time using similar materials.  I used Scalescenes printed sheets (www.scalescenes.com), TX06 Aged Red Brick and TX44 Dark Random Ashlar on a card base of various thicknesses. A postal tube (cut in half) was used to the tunnel. The fence is made from strips of 20thou styrene for the rails with matchstick for the posts.

 

To make the trees, I usually use twigs collected from the garden or roadsides. I find that Swamp Paperbark and Coast Tea-tree twigs have the best form for trees. For foliage I use Woodland Scenic's foams.  For trees in high traffic area's such as this at the front of the layout I use foliage clusters as it tends to make the trees stand-up to the occasional brush or knock. I use reference photo's to get the right mix of trees (species, colours, size and height).

 

 

In this case I used Google Earth - Street View to look at the vegetation between the railway and Scott Parade and choose representative trees to model. The area is almost complete, only a few smaller trees to add.