Wandering around at the back end of October last year I became aware that Brettell Road might not have enough fallen leaves to accurately represent the time of the year I was trying to depict.  Theres 2 types of autumn.  The really pretty one thats kind of fleeting and gets used in image libraries and on jigsaws.  Then theres the drudgy one that doesn’t but hangs around a lot longer.  You can probably guess which one of those two I decided I wanted.

On the backscene on the end of the layout theres a line of trees that hints at the line continuing to curve to the right as you head towards Stourbridge.  So these are the source for a spot of leaf litter. Ive always assumed that the wind is blowing from the left as you look at the layout and the weathering of the wet bits has always reflected this. To get the mulch I wanted I used a combination of kids power paint scatter and a couple of different types of autumnal leaves from AK Interactive mixed in place on the layout in a somewhat haphazard way and sealed with AK sand and gravel fixer.  Once dry it was given another coat of wet effects fluid to blend it all together.  I included a little more overflow down onto the platform and the tracks and I might revisit this and add more along the platform edge.  Although the line speed on the layout is only 35mph and most trains entering the platform are going slower than that it’s still reasonable to assume trains will blow leaves from the other side of the bridge along with them.

This is the central bridge and Ice assumed that there are more tress behind me.  Again with a bias toward the leaves being blown from the left.  Im not sure if they look a little bright here (no idea why as its the same technique using the same stuff) but next time I am weathering some underframes I might give a very light coat of dark mud to tone them down a little.

The same scene as above in a more intentional lighting.

While I had the wet effects fluid out I gave the platforms another coat.  Here we see the station in a quiet moment.