Yes it dose add to the appearance, and that is a nice tool it’s got to make life easier.
Chuck
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Down by the Cleaveland Junction depot.
I made the trees years ago for a tribute to Scenic Railways layout I had. The “pines” are loofah and the leafy trees are rope and green sawdust. The little urn near the depot started life as a Thai style chess piece and it has a little unraveled rope with bits of painted sponge glued on for flowers.
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I have a lot of repurposed/hand built items on my layout. Here is a Buzz Lightyear ride I made out of a plastic tube, a slow rotating turntable, and ride vehicles.
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WOW that is amazing love it!!
Chuck
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Probably the best thing I ever built.
Here’s the tribute to tinplate layout:
This was the layout in my bedroom which celebrated my visits to and love of Thailand.
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That Thailand layout is amazing!
What prompted the visits to Thailand, Becky?
WOW vary nice Penny amazing love it
Chuck
Medical care that was ten times cheaper than what was available in the USA.
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Thanks! I based the design of the Thai layout on the Lionel D-63 with a hill on the left and a city on the right.
Christmas time it was all postwar and Plasticville.
That viaduct was all hand made except for the Lionel arch under bridge in the center.
Next door was the prewar layout.
All those buildings were made of cardstock. Including…
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This may not be the response you may have been looking for, but here’s my two cents. It is verifiably worth that and more.
I’m at the point where what my idea for my layout needs, is tiny detail. I strike for a sufficient amount of detail to give plausibility, not photo-like realism. I do things like add interiors to buildings, especially when a building sits apart from others on the layout, inviting closer inspection than might come from a row of storefronts with 2D paper interiors. Realism requires three dimensions. But those details, when bought from detail vendors, can really add up in cost. Some of them arrive looking pretty crummy, too, because manufacturers use sloppy molds. But you won’t see that until you’ve already paid for them and they arrive, unless you have a well stocked hobby shop to look over personally.
For example, I wanted a desk for a yard office, to be prominently visible just inside the structure’s rather large windows. I purchased one desk, which set me back $8. For one desk! When I quickly tallied the cost of the number of desks I envisioned throughout the layout, it would have cost me as much as a new locomotive.
So I bought $8 worth of thin styrene sheet instead. Using the purchased desk as a model I cut the sheet into the size of strips from which I could assemble a few dozen desks of my own. A little time, a very little glue, a bit of paint, and I saved over $120. My desks look better than the one I bought, too. I was able to create them in various sizes and configurations, as needed.
I wanted a couple of small lifting conveyors, for a trackside farmers exchange, a local coal dealer, etc. The cost of buying enough of them also added up. So I looked around for other workable options.
Y’know the thin plastic band left behind on the jug when you first open a gallon of milk? If you take that off the milk jug and flip it inside out it looks like a segmented conveyor belt. I cut small pieces off a dowel to use as end rotors, used scrap plastic to build upright frames, added wheels from my scrap box and had my own lifting conveyors for free. Well, for the cost of a gallon of milk, which I drank anyway. Painted and weathered, they look quite nice. (I sanded the ‘belt’ so it’d look more thin.)
I wanted some bi-color ground signal heads for yards and other places. From an electronics supply house I got two dozen small, rectangular two-hole LED boxes already wired with the LEDs installed. While the rectangular boxes would have looked fine as they arrived, I used my Cricut machine (so I could guarantee accuracy of pieces cut in quantity and cut decent, tiny curves) to cut oval backplates for the boxes so they’d look more prototypical. Bingo! I had 24 bi-color ground signals for less than $6. Since my railroad is a freelance prototypical I can decide all I’d like, what my signal heads should look like while mimicking real ones close enough for excellent plausibility.
Now I can afford to buy that monster railroad terminal I’ve wanted. I suppose I should get started converting those nice little yard sale metal beads into chandeliers using micro-LEDS inside then as lights.
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This is one of my favorite tree making techniques.
Start with 26 gauge floral wire twisted into loops of varying lengths to make a tree armature.
Coat the entire tree armature with hot glue.
Paint everything. I like a fawn color acrylic.
Wash the tree with diluted gray, let dry. Then wash again with diluted black making sure it collects in the crags and crevices.
Glue on clump foliage.
Probably the best benefits of this technique is you can make your trees any size you want, they’re relatively inexpensive and because of the hot glue the branches remain flexible.
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Nice
Bravo! Amazing builds!
