Cover

The book is divided in sections where each section is based on a scenery theme. The scections go in logical order, starting with ground cover, then trees, and so forth. Each of the sections consits of several chapters showing the reader step by step how to produce each item. The steps are so easy that most can be completed in one evening, and makes you wonder why it really took so long for someone to figure out how to produce super realistic scenery with such ease.

The title A Complete Photo Guide, is no lie. This book contains just over 200 photos, and all are typical of Sassi's work; clean, sharp, informative. Many of the text are just captions to the photos, but even the text is indeph so it does not seem like you are lacking any information in any of the steps.

The major focus and a now must have for layouts is a mixture of brown paint, glue
and vermiculite wich Sassi calls "ground goop". Ever since seeing this in the book and in person on a few other layouts, I can not see building a layout with out it. First of all it creates a ground texture that really represents dirt and bare ground, and second the glue in the goop holds scenery textures such as ground foam, static grass, and tree trunks really well.

Realistic deal leaves on my former N scale layout

Even though Kalmbach considers this book a how to on basic scenery it really goes beyond that with all the detail you can create. There is even a section in the end that shows you how to make grade crossings, signs, and other details. Something that should be on EVERY layout.

Although Sassi models in HO scale, you can bet that the scenery will work in any scale. I tried several of the suggestions when I was building my N scale layout a year ago, and it produced some very realistic results for 1:160.

Rating (out of 10): 10
Purchase?:
Price: $19.95