Ok, this is rather specific. Does anyone out there know how to make or where to buy realistic looking hay/straw bales for HO scale? I’m looking for the rectangular kind, not round. I have a farm scene and I can find just about anything else, except bales that look decent. I’ve found a few that don’t look very convincing and I haven’t come up with a good way to make them myself. Any thoughts?
Hi Rob,
I made my own bales of hay. Here;s how I did it. I first cut foam to the size I wanted in rectangular shapes. Then I took some woodland scenic field grass and cut it up in tiny peaces let it fall in some sort of a small cup or box. I then covered my foam cubes with Hobby-Tac & waited about 15 min. for the H-T to dry somewhat and then roll the foam cubes into the cut-up field grass. That made some very convincing looking bales of hay.
Good luck
Sam
Michaels craft storse sell hay bales very cheap. These are much too big for HO but you take the straw and just shake it lose and then apply to foam, balsa etc with contact cement.
Eh… The LION was going to tell you to just use a spoon sized Shredded Wheat, but alas you are looking for square bales! And if you used the sugared ones you could model a winter scene!
Ach! EAT that Idea! [:P]
I would be hesitant in using ANY food products on your layout. Critters will find them quite tasty.
That’s pretty much how I did it in N scale. I got the dimensions of square and round bales from a farmer friend and I happened to have some square and round strip wood very close to the right sizes. I applied the yellow WS field grass as Sam described. After the glue dried, I trimmed the bales as they were looking quite hairy at that point. My farmer friend said they looked pretty good to him.
And the problem with critters is what?
The mascot of the Broadway LION, he stands at the end of the railroad on Broadway at Van Courtlandt Park. His name is “Aslan” and there will be a small park there with some spruce trees and a gas lamp with one of the ladder bars missing. The other beast (below) is Ramu a fine tiger of my acquaintance.
The question is what size square bales? The small ones (14 x 18 inches x ? length) or the large ones ( 3 feet x 3 feet x ? feet long, 3 feet x 4 feet x ? feet long; or 4 feet x 4 feet x ? feet long).
The small ones can be made by laminating two .188 x .060 styrene strips to the outside of a .188 x .080 strip. Once completely cemented, cut into lengths about 3/8" and round the ends. You could also file some small grooves in the ends where the joints are. This would give an impression of the twines. The sides (and top) could be scored/sanded to indicate the individual flakes. Any flash created may be left to make a flare that sometimes appears.
The larger ones can be made from wood blocks of the appropriate size and cut to a length of 3/4" to 7/8" long. This works out to about 5-1/2 feet to 6 feet 4 inches which is close to the popular sizes of 5 feet to 6 feet long. Although commercial hay growers will make bales up 8 feet long for long distance transport.
These HO “bales” can be left square as the bales are tightly commpressed and don’t tend to round off at the edges.
The hay bales can then be painted a drab olive green and drybrushed with some brighter green or tan/brown to highlight certain areas.
Straw bales could be painted a golden to pale yellow.
Hope this helps.
Steve
P.S. Occasionally on ebay some bales come up from a seller/maker from Quebec.
Odd, I have used the 242nd Street (#1) station many times over the years, and cannot recall that subway station ever looking anything like the old Revell Passenger Station (the reality is a bit cooler looking I think).
Also, I can’t seem to recall any connection between the ‘Chronicals of Narnia’ & Riverdale/Kingsbridge, except maybe some paperbacks being sold at that corner ‘candy’ store across Broadway from the McDonalds - perhaps you can enlighten me, “Lion”. Perhaps Stella Dora or the beverage center had something to do with it?
Back to the Hay - The OP is correct, BTW, I looked on-line for premade Hay Bales (because I was wondering myself), and the offerings I found looked either like Plywood Crates or torn-up sponges - Not very realistic, which is odd for this hobby nowadays.
The LION is CHEAP, and uses whatever he has at hand. That Revell station is red, and the IRT station is red. That is about as close as I will get until I get to really detailing that part of the layout. But if you must know then I will tell you that the timbers used in the original Kingsbridge (below) were indeed original from Narnia and lend a magical mystical aura to the neighborhood. And as you well know, there are LIONS in the Bronx!
Yeah, I had gathered that from your SubChat postings.
Then you darn well better forget that Lion park and remember to include that row of single story stores along the West side of Broadway, which at least in the mid-1980s (when I was attending the “Home of Leisurely Learning”) included no less than 4 bars (I didn’t drink much, but it was ‘the’ social scene, at least until the year of the New York State 19-21 drinking age two-step - also don’t forget to include the crappy pizzeria (for some reason we called it Joe’s, perhaps that was even the name) where I used to stop and get a slice before heading home.
Ummm, yeh…
Kingsbridge’s “Kings Bridge”: The King’s Bridge, erected in 1693 by Frederick Philipse, a local Lord loyal to the British Monarch.
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children’s literature and is the author’s best-known work, having sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages. Written by Lewis between 1949 and 1954, illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published in London between October 1950 and March 1956,
Sorry Lione, this is n
Then you darn well better forget that Lion park and remember to include that row of single story stores along the West side of Broadway,
Yes, I have photographed those buildings. The problem with putting them on the west side of Broadway on my layout is that there is no west side. That is where the viewer is standing. I am debating if I should take license to put them on the east side, and probably will, I will then let VCP appear a little further north.
In any event, and to stay on the thread topic, here is the tree that is just west of the tracks and east of the buildings.
And… I told you there were LIONS in the Bronx!
Welcome to the forums.
Steve is correct on a small square bale being 14"x18" and if you make them 36" long they stack very nicely. Of course in real life the baler may make them a little over if you are really pushing it, but not usually enough to make enough difference to show in scale bales. Some folks do make them shorter, either because they are lighter to handle or they just tumble them into the barn and do not stack them.
The large square bales are in many sizes, never delt with them.
Just for info, for anyone thinking round bales. My baler makes the smallest round bales there are these days, 3’ diameter 4’ long. (There used to be round balers in the 40’s and 50’s that made ones about 3’ long and 15" in diameter.) In the northeast the most popular large round bales I have seen are 4’x4’ with 4’x5’ then the largest I know of is 6’x6’. Haven’t dealt with them either, no equipment big enough.
Have been planning to make some for my farm scene. Planning to use wood strips as the base. Like the idea of field grass. The hay would lay pretty straight in the 18" direction. Now to figure how to make the cut sides look right.
Good luck,
Richard
Richard,
I am going with the 14 x 18 x 36 bales for their ability to be stacked. My layout will be set around 1950 and I think the large, round bales popular today, were only just starting to be experimented with. Even when I was a kid, growing up in the Northeast in the 60’s and 70’s, rectangular bales were about all I ever saw.
I’m not sure how to deal with making the sides look cut either. Perhaps that is too fine of a detail to be worried about, but it’s one of the things that bothered me about the limited selection of commercially available bales. I still can’t understand how you can’t just buy decent looking bales. There are so many other little, obscure details you can just buy, but the common old straw bale didn’t make seem to make the cut, so to speak. What are the scale cows and horses supposed to eat and sleep on?!
Anyway, one thing I have tried is cutting plain old braided rope into small lengths to represent loose, cut straw. It works pretty good and is REALLY cheap! I have also thrown some of the cut strands into a small jar, added a little green weathering powder and after shaking it around ended up with some pretty believable looking loose hay. Way more affordable than the Woodland Scenics field grass!
Thanks everyone for your ideas. I will let you know if I come up with anything else.
Rob
Rob,
You’re right, large round bales were not around in the 50’s.
Have been thinking about this since I read your post. I think that gluing field grass, untwisted rope or in my case, baler twine, flat on the sides of the bales. Then using a similarly colored fine ground foam on the cut sides. Haven’t had a chance to check out colors yet to see what kind of color match I can get.
Since I haven’t found an appropriate baler for the era, I think that I will put several rows of bales in the field, I would have a tractor pulling a wagon with the start of a load on it, plus a couple of folks getting their exercise. I sure liked that kind of exercise when I was 50 years younger. Kept me tired and out of trouble.
Keep us posted on your progress.
Good luck,
Richard
Hi, Rob, and welcome.
I have used Woodland Scenics’ (WS, to us modelers) field grass (in the yellow color, although the light green would work for the freshly-cut stuff) to make a haystack and loose hay in a feeding rack.
I made the haystack the same way as Sam suggested: covering a Styrofoam shape with small pieces of the field grass. I’m sure this would work for the bales as well.
I agree that the commercial models I’ve seen look cheap and plasticy. That could probably be cured by a light wash of gray paint, but I still think you’d get better results with the foam (or wood) cube and field grass.
One of my favorite resources for specialty scenery products is Miniature Planet. I’ve included a link to their best rectangular hay bales:
Thanks for that source! His stuff really looks good, and reasonably priced.
Ok, I haven’t given up on this yet. I’ve tried a few approaches with varying degrees of disappointment, but may be getting close on this most recent attempt. A few links to pics are attached (assuming the links work). Aside from the shoddy lighting, staging and overall photo quality, any thoughts on the straw bale?
https://picasaweb.google.com/robsmithnc/ModelRailroad#5713307225756548210
https://picasaweb.google.com/robsmithnc/ModelRailroad#5713307226541555458
https://picasaweb.google.com/robsmithnc/ModelRailroad#5713319342818501298
Gidday Rob,
Looks like the genuine article to me, am getting a sore back and blistered hands just thinking of stacking a few 1000 or so, though unless the bales had thistles in them, straw was lighter and easier to throw about than good hay. The only difference to this part of the world that the baling twine was natural green fibre. I guess that it wasn’t till the early 80s that it changed to black or a dark red synthetic.
Keep up the good work,
Cheers, The Bear.