What alternatives do I have with the following, assuming I want to remove later for lighting installation or weathering upgrades:
Attaching:
a plastic structure to a cork surface
a plastic structure to plywood
And- what about permanent attachment, with no need to remove later on?
Thanks for any advice
You can glue anything down to the layout if you want.
I, personally, would not glue down buildings, especially if they have light bulbs in them that need changing. Secondly, If I set a building down, it shouldn’t go anywhere {unless the cat gets up there lol} so I see no need to permanently attach them. Then again I like to change things around and change eras on my layout.
IF, however, I was to move the layout often, and turning it sideways would cause all to move off to the floor, I would then use regular glue to glue them down I think. Cheap easy quick. Some craft glues are good and strong. Most will glue about anything to anything.
my [2c]
I’m with galaxy on this. Gravity first then white glue. The beauty with white glue is you can re wet it and move the building if you need to
ratled
There are some additional thoughts on this is another thread: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/171329/1880966.aspx#1880966
I notice that some people glue strip wood to the layout just inside the structures. This keeps them from moving. Seems to me that you could use some of that peel-n-stick Velcro between the structures and the strip wood. You could turn it upside down and the structures would stay attached but remove with a pull.
I have a pretty good size layout and a lot of structures on it. None of them are glued down in any manner. At first, I worried a little about it, but those worries quickly went away. Nothing moves so whats the point of securing it.
I use stripwood brackets in the corners. It helps them stay where they belong when errant fingers, uncoupling skewers, and, yes, the cat, run into them.
I like the magnet idea - magnet tape isn’t terribly expensive and it only takes a small square ot two to hold a structure in place. A good trick to make a building look built in palce instead of perched on top of the scenery, and still be removeable, it to use some plastic wrap under the building and up the sides, then build the scenery in. You should be able to easily lift out the structure and remove the palstic wrap once the scenery is dry.
Magnet tape is how I plan to hold my removable backdrops in place in front of my staging yard. A few scraps of wood glued to the foam with caulk will have magnet tape applied, matching that on the back of the backdrop sections.
–Randy
Pins glued to the corners of the structures and stuck into the scenery holds the buildings on my portable modules and easily removed when moved.
Pete
I’ll add my two cents and agree with most of the others as I see no real need to glue structures to the layout with possibly the exception of back drop building as they don’t have the full foot print of a "regular building to help keep it stable.In those very rare occasions a small dab of non hardening latex caulk. I came across a little better solution when I started adding backs to my backdrop structures to get better lighting effects or simply to just keep the light from shining through them I have used Velcro strips, double sided tape and the blob of caulking.
Woodland scenics in their handbook for scenery suggested gluing to thin shhet of styrene sheets wither 0.010 or 0.020 thick. Leave space around the structure for scenery and when placed on the layout, blend the scenry together. When needed the buiding can be lifted off the layout and back in place without disrupting the scanery. I used this techinque for all structures and works well. Hope this works.
Or Styrene when the base is styrene or other equivalent plastic. These little ‘blocks’ do a great job of more precisely anchoring and aligning the structure in its proper place.
I visited a guy’s layout on a layout tour (can’t recall his name, sorry) and he had a rather neat idea. For some of the structures he had arrived at standardized sizes of bases, so the structures – perhaps with some accompanying scenery if the building was smaller than its base – could be moved around, swapped out, or taken off the layout for a time. A modular approach, in other words. The structures sort of “clicked” in place when he demonstrated it. He may have used a magnet and metal washer approach to secure the buildings, like some fellows do with their backdrop structures.
My recollection is that part of his reason was so he could change eras. Pick off the steam era water tank or sand house or coal tower and plop down a more modern structure for the same spot.
Dave Nelson
I have used styrene strips in the past glued to the corners of the inside foundation so I can remove them for weathering, painting, inside detailing, and lighting.
For my city street buildings, I build up the sidewalks on the outside of the structures, and fit the buildings into the resulting opening:
I put interiors into a lot of my structures, particularly those at the front of the layout.
The recessed bases keep the buildings from shifting around due to normal vibration, but I am still free to lift them vertically off the bases if I need to work behind them, for example. Also, by putting the bases below the level of the sidewalks, I block out any of the interior lighting and keep it from leaking under the base.
