Drystone Moss: a 006 pizza - forming the landscape

The inspiration for Drystone Moss comes from a place called Drystone Edge, which is located in the Staffordshire Moorlands close to Buxton. It's an area that I know and love, hence the fact that I've used it as inspiration for this project. It also gave the pizza its name, losing the Edge and adding Moss as there are a few areas of local moorland that end in Moss. I have of course played fast and loose with geography and history, no railway was ever built in the area (and if there was 18" would never have been considered) and the terrain would have been unsuitable anyway. However, worse crimes have been committed in the name of narrow gauge modelling...

This is how the area looks;

Drystone Edge is a ridge, situated close to the more famous Axe Edge;

The ridge is best described as bleak, especially in winter, but for some reason I'm drawn to bleak. I've been up there on foot and on the fatbike.

Obviously I'm not modelling a ridge, but more of a hilltop with a tramway contouring around it, running between here and there through the middle of nowhere.

The landform is made from expanded polystyrene packaging, carved to shape with a Woodland Scenics hot wire cutter and a snap-off blade knife;

The lines are there to mark out a path to the summit, where there will be a small rock formation;

I spent a lot of time carving, thinking, asking my wife Dani for her opinion, before glueing the landform down with UHU POR. Then I covered the polystyrene with a thin layer of filler, doctored with PVA and a mix of mars black and burnt umber artists acrylics;

In the photo above you can see where I've carved a hollow.

The underlying soil is peat, quite dark in colour;

To represent that soil type I mixed up more artists acrylics (Daler Rowney), again using burnt umber and mars black with a dash of warm grey;

As for a reason for a railway, there have been coal mines on Axe Edge as well as peat cutting (the peat was used in the local spas for bathing in!), nearby Orchard Common also saw some small scale coal mining and there was gritstone quarrying and lead mining locally as well. So, my excuses are in!

Ballast next, but first, a brew;

Paul.