Slot Car Scenery – Soft shell and ground cover.

Scenery

Marshalling deslotted slot cars happens in the heat of the race, so a scenic slot car track needs to withstand wear and tear. My approach is to create a soft scenery shell as a base for the ground cover.

Instead of creating a hard shell with plaster cloth or a solid Styrofoam structure covered in hard gypsum or Sculptamold, I prefer using soft mats over sponges. The soft mat can be a scenic grass mat, but I use painter’s felt, which I paint in a dirt color and sprinkle static grass on top.

Painter’s felt is a soft fleece floor protector made from non-woven recycled fabric and plastic, with a plastic backing.

The plastic backing makes it easy to glue down quickly with a low-temp glue gun. Edges and transitions between felt pieces can be smoothed and “welded” together by melting the plastic with the glue gun. The plastic backing also prevents wet paint and glue from dripping through to the table or floor.

This is how I created the soft scenery

• I cut used sponges into shape and hot glued them in place to form the basic structure. For larger areas that needed to be raised, I used scrap pieces of foam underneath. If there was a steep gap between levels, I glued in cardboard strips and covered them with one or more layers of felt.

• Once the felt was in place, I glued rock castings with the glue gun and filled gaps using a paste made from ground-up egg cartons mixed with base-color paint and tile grout for added texture and strength.

• Next, I painted the felt with a base ground color—something brown but not too dark—and highlighted raised areas with a lighter brown. For dips and low spots, I used a darker brown.

• While the base paint was still wet, I added dirt in various shades for extra texture (and quicker drying). Along track edges, I used soft foam-based ground cover or colored sawdust. For larger gravel pieces, I ground up cork mats from the kitchen.

• When the base coat dried, it was time to grow some grass. I wetted the grass areas with scenic cement and sprinkled static grass in a base color using a static grass applicator (optional). Then I added more glue (with a paintbrush or spray bottle) and sprinkled different shades of grass to accentuate raised areas with light, dry grass and low areas with lush, dark grass.

• I added larger ground cover and tree foliage in small clusters to create bushes and flowers. I mixed tree foliage with green or brown pillow stuffing, stretching it out until it became opaque, and used it for hedges.

• Finally, I sprayed down the entire area (covering the track) with scenic cement to fix everything in place. I repeated this step a few times, letting it dry before vacuuming the loose material. I used a sock as a filter on the vacuum hose to catch and reuse the loose material.

Tools & material