Examples / P-04
Greenline 6
In world
The bus rolls at nine miles an hour because anything faster shakes the seedlings loose.
Every window is gone, replaced with salvaged glass and stretched plastic sheet, and behind them the whole interior is racks. Forty trays per rack, six racks per side, and every tray holds seedlings in soil that Wildkin crews carried up from the river bottoms one bucket at a time. The roof is cut open and glazed too. From above, Greenline 6 looks like a long green box of light moving through gray country.
The burn belt is forty miles of ground that caught fire in 2118 and has never come back. Nothing holds the soil. When it rains, the hills run into the creeks, and the creeks choke, and the fish die, and the towns downstream go hungry. The Wildkin decided this was worth fixing, which is a thing you can only decide if you plan on being alive in eighty years.
Sunny drives. Behind her, six people work the trays with their sleeves rolled up, and at the back somebody keeps a cast iron stove going, because the seedlings need heat at night more than the people do.
They plant in a line, walking behind the bus, pushing each seedling into a hole punched by a steel bar. Two hundred a day if the ground is good. Forty if it is not.
Nobody on this crew will see a forest here. Sunny's daughter might. That is the deal, and everybody on board signed it knowing exactly what it was.
There is a number painted on the side of the bus. Under it, hand lettered, small enough that you have to be standing close: PLANTED 41,900.
Reference images
Out of world
What it is
A bus converted to a rolling nursery. This is the vegetation and materials build.
Donor kits
- Base: AK Interactive T2 Model 1967 Bus (AK35022) or T2 Model 1967 Airport Bus (AK35033) in 1/35. The T2 is mostly window already, which is exactly what this build needs. The Type HY Public Service van (AK35036) is a shorter option with the same big glass area. Any bus or box truck in any scale works too.
- Glazing: clear acetate, packaging plastic, or the clear sheet from a blister pack. Do not buy anything.
- Vegetation: static grass, sisal fiber, dried tea leaves, sea foam, real dirt sifted through a kitchen strainer.
The build
- 01
Open it up
Cut the roof out and cut every window frame open. This is loud, messy work with a razor saw. Take your time and clean the edges with a sanding stick, because every one of those edges will be visible.
- 02
Build the racks
Strip styrene or laser cut wood, repeated. Build one rack, check it fits, then build the rest. Trays are just rectangles of thin sheet.
- 03
Cut the glazing crooked
This is the important part. Every pane should be a different size and set at a slightly different angle, because these are salvaged. A neat glass job kills the whole idea.
- 04
Fill the trays for real
Real sifted soil, held with dilute white glue. Seedlings are sisal fiber or the finest static grass you have, planted in small clumps with tweezers. It is slow. Do three trays a night.
- 05
Weather from the bottom up
Mud and dust on the lower third, clean glass up top where people wipe it. The contrast is what says this thing is cared for.
- 06
Add the count
Hand letter the planted number small. Small text that rewards leaning in is worth more than big text that shouts.
Make it yours
Plants and dirt are model materials, and the good ones are free. A tank full of tomatoes tells a better story than a tank full of ammunition.