I haven’t posted in a while. I hope everyone is doing good.
I want to model a wildfire scene. I made one many years ago when I was a kid but it was replaced at some point during a remodel. I want to do it again but I want it to be better than before. I have some firetrucks and some firemen. I would like to see some examples if anyone has any pictures or ideas. Thank you.
I don’t know whether you made it to the NMRA National Train Show when it was in Anaheim several years ago but several Lego train clubs showed a joint modular layout featuring wildfire theme. It was one of the big hits of the show! I wish I had had a camera with me. The burning areas required a little imagination as they used the clear orange Lego flame pieces to represent fire, but the burnt areas looked great. Lots of equipment staging/planning areas, figures and vehicles working the edges of burning areas, and even a Sikorsky Sky Crane helicopter hovering over a lake while it pumped water into its drop tank. I would imagine someone has posted pictures of that display on the internet, maybe even on the NMRA website.
I have seen some pretty good representations of fire using flickering yellow, orange and red lights (LED’s?) shining up from the base of pieces of Celophane or other thin flexible clear plastic and small fans placed above or below the “fire” to make the light colored strips of Celophane wave around. Maybe a little experimentation with this idea would work for you.
Good luck and enjoy!
The Colorado Model Railroad Museum layout has a forest fire scene, shown in the 2023 Great Model Railroads issue and in a video on Trains.com.
Are you referring to an in-progress wildfire, or a scene after the fire?
I have several places on my layout that aren’t too far-off from having almost no scenery, and which could have been decimated by fire or perhaps a tornado or hurricane…to be honest, though, it’s simply a number of places where there’s little scenery other than ballasted track, and also a bunch of tools, partially built structures, and boxes of stuff that will eventually be used.
Wayne
I do want to have some flickering flames. I have some Halloween lights that I am going to try to use. I’m go to try to hide them behind some burning bushes and see how that looks. I will try using celephane like you suggest. Thank you.
Thank you. I will look for the video and also see if I can find some pictures.
My old scene was just the burn scar. It was mostly a bunch of half burned wooden matches. It made modeling a forest a lot easier for a kid with pretty much no income.
This time I want to do it right. The brush fires we have in California usually only have flames on the edge of the fire. Behind that is a bunch of coals and embers, and behind that is the blackened charred remains of trees, bushes and grass. The fuel we have here burns fast and then it’s burnt out. I want to try to capture all of it.
I want to capture where the fire trucks and firefighters are trying to establish the line around the fire. I also want to include a line of the red powder that the planes drop because that is visable.
What I noticed with the 3 wildfires in recent memory near Colorado Springs was the uneveness of the flame front due to hills and valleys and wind. Nothing like a solid sheet at all. As the fire advanced there would be entire stands of trees or patches of land that got missed, without any obvious rhyme or reason. This could be seen from the burn scars after the fact, too.
Fred W
…modeling foggy coastal Oregon in HO and HOn3, where it’s always 1900…
Yes, fires can have fingers where some sections burn faster than others. Also when there are high winds there are spot fires which break out past the fireline caused by burning embers flying through the air and landing on dry brush, trees and even houses.
We had a discussion a few months ago about a seller of ‘nuclear explosion lamps’ which used the equivalent of airbrush-painted cotton waste and strategic strings of LEDs to simulate the roiling fireball inside a ‘developing’ mushroom cloud. This would be something to consider for a fire at the ‘edge’ of a layout, including continuation of the fireline into the backdrop…
I had one of those model-railroading books from the Forties that described making a waterfall out of a rotating drum of theatrical gels with small bulbs inside, ‘projecting’ the motion on matte-coated clear plastic or glass. That might be updated to work with ‘flickering’ LEDs to add to the color range and flame simulation without going to streamers and fans. That might be especially useful in a backdrop to simulate a more massive fire ‘far away’.
Thanks, that gave me some ideas.
Here is a little update. I made fire by cutting corner pieces of clear plastic packaging into strips and painting them red, orange, and yellow. Before I painted them I cut out the shape of the flames. The scene still has a long way to go and I am taking my time since after all this is a life long hobby. And as you can see the hills in the background have not yet been plastered. The ground behind the wall of flames will be red and then changing into blacken char a little farther back.
What about using orange/yellow/red construction paper for the fire?
I will try that. I’m always open to experiment especailly when it’s with material I already have on hand. [:)]
Hi Lone Wolf,
I think your flames look pretty good!
I would definitely stay with the clear plastic for the flames. One thing you might try is using some Tamiya Clear paint. It comes in yellow, red and orange. It would give a bit of translucency to the flames which might look very realistic. I would also suggest having two or three rows of painted strips close together in some areas, particularly where the flames are high.
Those are just the thoughts off of the top of my head. What you have done so far looks pretty realistic so maybe no changes are required.
Cheers!!
Dave
Thank you for the complements and the suggestions. The reason I decided to try the clear plastic is so the flames can be somewhat see through. I like the idea of having additional rows of flames. I will put them very close to the first row and see how that looks. I think it is a great idea.
Here’s a good video on the museum, the impressive fire scene starts about 9 minutes in…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrldCltqLB8&t=506s
Another thought: tissue paper? You can easily ball it up.
Yes. When I first read your comment about construction paper I thought of tissue paper.
My concern about tissue paper or construction paper is that they will fade over time. Also, keeping them dust free without damaging them will be a challenge.
As I said earlier, I think that using clear plastic will give much better results. If you don’t want to invest in the Tamiya ‘clear’ coloured paints then you might be able to achieve a similar effect by thinning the paints that you are using.
Have you given any thoughts to how to do the blackened areas behind the flames? I remember as a youth seeing multiple grass fires. In most situations the burned sections had some charred weeds and shrubs that were still standing, often with traces of smoke still coming from them (there was the occasional bbq’d rabbit too but you might not want to models details like that!). Maybe a few very thin wisps of cotton batting might add to the scene.
I’m sorry if I am being overly assertive. I am very intrigued by your grass fire scene.
Cheers!!
Dave