i dont want to spend that much money on my train set because i dont have much to spend so i was wonderin if anyone could give me any ideas on giving my tain set scenery and any ideas on what i can make my buildings out of
Sorry I didn’t give scenery tips [:(]
Over on the Atlas forum in the n scale section a gentlemen posted a car load with steel culverts, they looked real as heck, turns out he did it with aluminum foil wrapped around a screw. Who would have thought? I now have a slew of them at the power plant waiting to run the coal slurry to the slag lake [:)]
His pick not mine:
Link to thread: http://forum.atlasrr.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=20412&whichpage=2
Another thing is to print on your PC soda machines and glue them on a piece of plastic, that came from TrainBoard.Com N scale,
Link to thread: http://www.trainboard.com/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topic/f/9/t/006434.html
and I have made wrapped lumber loads from real ones by grabbing the image and resizing and glueing onto some balsa wood.
Added Links to the articles
I have made big pipes out of scraps of PVC plastic pipe scraps from the hardware store. They’ll usually give it to you. I cut it to length with a tubing cutter. I paint it with different color flat paint or primer, maybe weather it a little, and load it into a gon.
I have also made my own trees from weeds found growing in my back pasture. I was walking around checking the fence, and saw some weeds that looked kinda like the scrub Georgia pines that grow in these parts. I hung them upside down, and spray painted the bottom with a couple different shades of dark green paint. when dry, I turned them right side up, and sprayed them with lighter shades of green paint. Dry bru***he stems with brown and grey paint, themn spray with dull coat. I then take a blob of hot glue on wax paper, sprinkle it with ground clutter, ( ground foam, saw dust, real dirt, crushed lichen, etc. ) then “plant” the tree into the hot glue. Set 'em anywhere ya want. You could also “plant” them into your scenery base. ( Turns out the weeds are Ragweed, but after sealing them with the paint, I’ve had no problems! [;)] ) My wife, The Kid and myself knocked out a 100+ in about an hour and a half!
Found another weed that looked like a deciduous tree, and decorated those the same way.
There is a place where they cut a hill to make the road I live on, that faces North. Plenty of different moss and lichen grows on it. I collected a garbage bag full, to use on my layout. You can either paint it, let it dry to a normal color, or you can dye it with Rit fabric dye. I’ve been told you can add a little glycerine to the dye boil to keep the lichen soft.
Rotor
Hi there! Glad to see there’s another Dukes fan on this board! YEEEHA!
As for scenery, I find 2 liter pop bottles to be very useful. if you cut the bottom off them, and cover them in plaster, they make good hills/mountains.
I use coffee stirrers liberated from work. The plastic ones are pipe, and the wood ones will be a wood fence, and a wood floor for the roundhouse.
It’s not “found around the house,” but I went to US Plastics (www.usplastic.com) and ordered 2 big sheets (like 4x6 feet) of .020 styrene. The stuff cuts with a utility knife or tin snips, and you can use it to scratchbuild almost anything.
I used to use small boxes for buildings, you just cut them apart and flip them inside out because they usually have a plain inside and glue it back together except inside out. you can draw bricks and cut out holes for windows, then you can take some clear tape and make glass for your windows. I also made a billboard out of a soda pop lable and some tooth pics, I will find it and post some pictures of it.
Crumple up some aluminum foil, but not too crumpled, start with a sheet about the size of a sheet of paper until you get the hand of doing this, unfold it, then fold the edges up until it looks like a shallow pan, about 1/4" deep. Turn the “pan” over. Take a table knife, toothpick, some thin blunt object “carve” some strata into the foil, making sure you DON’T puncture the foil. Turn the “pan” back over. Mix up some plaster and pour it in to the “pan”. When dry remove the foil and you have an instant rock wall. Now all you have to do is place it into the layout and color it.
Painted drinking straws also makes a good pipe load for a flat car. Aluminum foil cubes, (crumpled foil again!), painted in varying shades of rusts, as well as any color you want with streaks of silver,(chrome), represents crushed cars for a gondola load. Painted bamboo skewers, cut off the sharp end, makes nice telephone pole loads for both gons and flats. Strips of manila folder cardboard, painted a steel color makes a nice plate steel load as well.
The cardboard that comes on the back of writing tablets/legal pads was a very early building material in the hobby. The “details” espically of the siding like clapboard was just drawn on the side with black ink. Windows were merely clear acetate, like school report covers with mullions drawn on them, again in ink. Windows were framed with thin strips of cardboard,(like manila folder), to simulate the sash of the window. Doors were made out of another piece of cardboard with another thin cutout glued to this to simulate separate door panels. The door frame was more thin strips cut and glued around the opening.
Roofs were modeled many ways but I used these 2. (The following will assume you have a scale ruler. If not I recommend that you get one, as they are one of those essential tools no one should be without.) Take a strip of masking tape a little longer than the roof, and cut it 1 scale foot wide. Then every 9-10 scale inches, (after a while you can ge
Broken kitchen scrub bru***o tree
Interesting, but how many scrub brushes can a guy have in the house? We just installed a dishwasher and I have yet since then wash a dish [:)]
Does look like a pretty simple step. Is that your picture set?
ASSuming this is in HO, see if you can get wooden toothpicks that are square in the middle. Cut off the round, pointy ends, leaving the square middle part the length of a tie. Paint a creosote color and use as is stacked in pile to represent new ties, or weather them up and toss them here and there as used ones.
Hope this helps
i use different colours of dirt for ground cover, if i am out in the car and see a nice colour of dirt i grab a bag full, i paint the base with white PVA glue, sprinkle some dirt on then spray with water/alcohol mix (the alcohol makes the water wetter and stops it from beading up on the surface) then i apply more dirt then i sift on the ground cover (i use woodland scenice ground foam then i gige it a drizzleing of more PVA glue dilluted 50/50 with water. i rumage in the bins at work for scrap plastic/styreane to make structures from, it’s amazing what goes in the bin were i work. have a look at my web site pictures
Best wishes
Try tearing apart old bic lighters(carefully) the gears and parts make great sized industrial gears and other small parts are brass for piping, even the shell can be used for propane tanks or oil storage tanks.
Some Great Tips! Dthurman, I especially like yours with the lumber load on the centerbeam flat car, cheaper than the ones you can buy!
Noah
I am a soon to quit smoker, sooo, I have a whole bunch of Bic’s. Great idea.
Old watches and pocket radios usually have an assortment of “detail parts” inside–gears, bits of wire, etc. that works great in junkyard scenes.
I just made this log load in about five minutes from sticks I gathered from behind my hobby shop.
Rotor
