Final working on scenery ... initially starting with the area on the outer mainline past the yard service area. Still have plenty of detail work to do here in this limited space.
If you recall, this portion of the outer mainline goes past the position where an operator would be reaching over the mainline to deal with setting up and managing the trains in the freight yard. The vertical board that I installed to keep the operator from dropping an arm down on a passing train needed to be disguised in some way and I choose to make it into a large retaining wall with a masonry lower section and corrugated metal upper section.
The sequence of shots shown here illustrate points along the way toward this level of partial completion.
Started with some plastic strips being used to represent poured concrete posts and the top of the masonry area.
After giving the plastic a coat of paint, added the lower sheets of plastic sheeting with a block texture ... the sheet that I used is considered HO scale brick that I'm accepting as very large Z scale cement blocks. The material was too thin in comparison to the corrugated metal (also plastic :0), so I needed to add some spacers behind the block surface to build it up a bit.
I gave the block wall a layer of paint in the concrete color and then I washed over it with a diluted paint in a "dust" color. The effect gives a weathered dirty appearance.
Next, the corrugated upper portion was installed and after painting with a aluminum color, the same diluted "dust" paint was applied again to the upper portion of the wall.
So far, all that I've done to the flat surface is cover it with Woodland Scenics Mold-A-Scene plaster and douse it with a earth colored wash.
I suppose that I forgot to mention that prior to starting this, I painted the track rails with a rust colored finish and added some rail brown paint to the ties.
Plenty more to do including ballasting the track, adding plant material growing in areas along the track, including some weeds and possibly a tree or two, and finally adding some plants and vines growing up the wall.