Joe Fugate once told me that you can get model railroad equipment with 3 qualities.
Cheap
Fast
Good
But you can only pick two.
So I pick cheap and good. Let’s talk about ways we can do this hobby cheap and good.
Personally, I watch for construction sites and at the end of the day, I go to the construction trailer find the boss and ask for the 2" foam scraps on the ground. I can usually fill my Explorer.
I’ve yet to buy a tree. I’ve found several different species of plants that when dried make good frames for trees.
For sale signs are an excellent source of styrene for scratching–and as some of you know. I use a lot of popsicle sticks. I must have used 200 out of the 1000 I paid $2 for.
Nearly all of the desert scenery on my home layout is real dirt from my back yard mixed with assorted shredded paper or aspen pet bedding, plaster, water-based paints, mortar, finely-ground tree bark, potting soil, or whatever I have left over from other projects.
I gather armature material from fields and roadsides as I see it, and I gather stuff that falls from trees if it looks like flocking or fine ground foam. I let it it sit and dry for a full year, then use it with sprays or whatever seems indicated for either fixing or colouring.
I used sifted garden soil and plaster for my yard surface. Other than that, I have had to purchase everything. Maybe I’ll start looking for materials for scratch building this coming …nope, we’re not even into spring yet, so I won’t use the W word.
For super detailing I find junk laying around. I use phone wire for radio entenias, and the gray insulation for air tanks. I also use thread for model electrical wires and some times air hoses.
I use a lot of $ Store rattle cans for painting…Redish brown primers mach great brick for DPM buildings,Flat grey for concrete. Cheap craft paint from Wally World and Hobby lobby I have picked up some as cheap as .25 cents…I also look for “basket case” engines,Rolling stock,and Buildings then rehab them…One of the better running engines I have I got for paying the postage on Guy said it wouldn’t run at all took the shell off someone had way over oiled it cleaned it and it runs great…never throw anything away I have a box of 10 to 15 engines that don’t run for one reason or another that I can get parts from same for rolling stock and buildings…Cox 47
I download graphics from the Web, and print them on cardstock for signs, or on decal paper for signs that would be “painted” on a brick or wood wall. I use coffee stirrers liberated from the coffee area at work. I bought one tunnel portal and made a latex mold from it, and then cast more portals from that. I did the same for a couple of sheets of “textured” styrene that I use for subway walls and platforms. (The hydrocal takes paint and weathering better than styrene, too, and I could even bend it around a sharp corner if I waited until the hydrocal had almost, but not quite, hardend up.)
Spacemouse has the right idea, but ya gotta be careful doing dumpster dives for usable stuff! About the only hard cash I usually spend is on glues or other things needed for projects I can’t find for free.
Cheap and great. I use those “for sale” signs for styrene which are sometimes free and much cheaper that the styrene at the LHS. I also buy a lot of my supplies at arts and craft shops such as artists acrylic paints (MUCH cheaper than dedicated model paints), brass, stripwood, glues, tools etc - at a fraction of the cost the LHSs charge. Some of these stores are even starting to carry a few model railroading supplies - at a discount. I scavenge thrift and dollar stores, second-hand shops, flee markets, Wal-Mart, construction sites, and am always on the lookout for usable items. I usually shop online for the best prices as I’m allergic to MSRPs. I also scratch build and buy detail parts from either the online discount hobby suppliers or proprietary firms. I avoid purchasing from Walthers or any other place that charges MSRP.
Sprues make pipes, chimneys, some flat ones cut down make decent feed sacks, cardstock makes siding, cut and glued in piles, it looks like plywood. paper clips work as downspouts, conduit, toilet paper for tar paper, small tubing cut up are good for piles of used tires, newspaper as newspaper.
Under-layout switch machine linkage - paper clip, and a length of brass tube (originally used ball pen cartridges, now purchased.)
Linkage from the above to the fascia-mounted manual throw - just about anything, including straightened coat hanger wire.
Fascia-mounted manual throw - the cheapest larger-size DPDT slide switches I can find.
And the electrical:
Wire for just about everything - salvaged communications cable, and odd lengths from contractor waste after wiring tract houses (acquired by asking.)
Terminal strips and blocks - scrap pieces of plywood or Masonite, #8 machine screws, #8 nuts and appropriate washers.
Specialwork built from raw rail is so obvious I hesitate to mention it. One sheet of hard balsa will produce enough ties to build a major terminal throat, with some left over for the coach yard ladder. Believe it or not, the spikes used are almost as expensive as the rest of the turnout!
Being on a strictly limited hobby budget ($25/month in the '70s, $50/month now), I made the decision from the beginning to minimize $$/hour of model railroading rather than just trying to limit $$.
But I also promised myself I would not let lack of funds be a cause of frustration. If I was learning a new skill or trying something I had never done before, I would not cut corners on tools or materials. Once I understood a particular aspect of the hobby and had established my own way of doing things, then I would see where cutting costs was feasible.
From the beginning (late '70s), I traded time for money by doing the following:
handlaid track
hand thrown turnouts
built my own DC throttles
built cars and locomotives from kits
favor buying craftsman kits. Although higher-priced, cost/hour was often lower due to many extra hours to assemble and paint and letter.
Other actions simply reduced costs without increasing time:
modest size layouts - this was enforced by having to move often courtesy Uncle Sam
very limited locomotive roster
common rail wiring
power routing turnouts
buying used rolling stock or bargains and specials
When practical, I would also gently turn down rolling stock, structure, and track gifts that did not fit with my period and era. I would always suggest somebody that might have a better use for it than I. But I’m not too stupid to accept a gift of a Rivarossi Heisler (too big and too new) and run it when it comes from my wife - and it’s the most expensive locomotive I’ve ever owned. I learned my lesson when I converted another gift - a Roundhouse box cab diesel to a Climax (using the Roundhouse kit). Didn’t think she notice - boy, was I wrong!
At the risk of offending our gracious host, this is the kind of information that used to be in Model Railroader. How to make something out of nothing. Now every article seems to espouse patronizing one or more of the magazine’s advertisers, usually at considerable expense.
My favorite target is Woodland Scenics, which has made an industry out of taking things that are generally available at a hardware store pretty cheap, re-packaging it into tiny boxes with clever names, then re-selling it for a relatively high price. Guess what? You can buy a 50lb bag of plaster of paris for a little more than what W.S. charges for their half-gallon carton, and Scenic Cement is really…white glue![;)]
And instead of providing articles about scratch-building things and including scale drawings, they advise you on how to kitbash three kits from Walthers (retailing at $39.99 each) into something more useful.
Really, W.S. is guilty of nothing more than brilliant point-of-purchase marketing, and without Walthers ads, MR would probably still be printed in black and white… so it’s really no surprise.
My favorite cost saving techniques have already been listed, from dumpster diving to looking for those diamonds in the rough at swap meets.
I also do a lot of salvaging from my parts box, too. Here’s a recent project using light boards salvaged from a DCC conversion…
The parts were all from the junque box, the cost was about 1 hour of my life… and an hour well-spent!
I have a garden railway, most people think that it is a hyper expensive type of model railroading, but as with everything else, its all about what your budget is.
I garden swap for my “scenery”. That is to say, I know people in my area that garden, I’ll trade them plant for plant to get what I want. Feed and seed stores are a mucho dirt cheap place to buy garden accessories, and my local feed store will give me potting containers for free. Dirt cost nothing, it’s laying around in my yard already. Anthing else I scavenge from the neighbors or buy when it’s an end of season sale.
My roadbed is brick and PVC, scavenged from my own home improvement project and cost nothing but time.
My track I buy prefab from Ridge Road in NY. They are 1/3 the cost of anywhere else and usually they will have a buy 3 get one free sale in the spring. My rolling stock is sometimes evilbay’d, but mostly it too is bought on sale or from flea markets. Hartland Locomotive Works is made right here in the USA and is very high quality and very affordable, so many of my 4 wheel tankers and flats are Hartland kits ($6 a piece).
Home Depot and Lowe’s are my scratch building friends. Many things in there can be used for structures and other projects. As was mentioned before, PVC is pennies on the dollar compared to plastistruct.
Wal-Mart is an excellent source of G scale cars and trucks, and many figure too! The “homies” line is very G scale for all practical purposes. Birdhouses can be used for buildings with only door or window mods and some paint.
Asphalt shingles make excellent asphalt roads and parking lots. Many, many things can be adapted to a garden railroad.
I bought a sheet of Walthers brick, painted it, and scanned it onto my PC. Voila! Got an image that can be cut and resized in Microsoft Word to get nice looking brick paper. Just resize the image to go from bricks to concrete blocks.
And to print it I use the “good” rag paper I use for letters; it gives the right texture to the bricks.
I am thoroughly enjoying collecting old back issues of MR and following the “Dollar Model” series. There were a lot of do-it-cheap-but-well concept articles back then. True, much of the technology has become obsolete, but I am getting a real kick out of doing and making things myself instead of buying the equivalent. Not only does it save money, it gives me a sense of satisfaction that I never get when I plop down an RTR-whatever on the layout.
Today’s “What Do You Mean, I Have to Make It? I Don’t Have Time for That!” modelers will never have this feeling.
I agree that the newer issues of Model Railroader push products from their advertisers in their kit-bashing and construction articles instead of suggesting using commonly available
I am on a strick income, so “cheap” is my middle name…
Ok, ok,ok I admit…
While I pondered weak and weary over many curious and quaint volumes of forgotten lore, while I nodded, nearly napping as I changed one roll for another, I began to fondle…oopss…I mean to THINK fondly of the toilet paper roll tube. A good one (nicely round-not squashed) may have a life as a temporary (or permanent) grain silo, storage tower, or for of course tanks, like sideways fuel tanks. They may even make culverts for waterways.
Painted nicely so humidity does not bother them, they may last very well. And are cheaper yet than the pvc pipe!Now, just think what I could do with a paper towel tube!
I think this is an old trick, but those little canisters of silicone found in pill bottles will serve as canisters somewhere…just unscrew the top, some unscrew…remove the silicone for those of you who have lit’l 'uns.
Speaking of pill bottles, I have one script that comes in a larger bottle…if I cut off the necks…they would be nicer towers that the TP tube! Just an idea…
