Anyone have any cheap or easy ways to spruce up my rails?, because I have No scenery what so ever, not even a small tree,or not even a switch track!
someone help! please!
Here you go. Read this forum clinic.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=1&TOPIC_ID=32122
There are so many things to do. I started at 13. If cheap is the issue, wadded newspaper, covered with paper towels dipped in cheap plaster of paris makes nice mountains. You can get cheap paint at a paint store in the throw away pile. You may have to make friends first. There are several threads on making trees. I have many that are almost free. If cheap isn’t a big problem get the Woodland Scenics “How To” book. You don’t have to use their expensive products but they do work. Loe Sassi’s scenery book has been most helpful to me.
Now, you have to refine your questions to one part at a time and you will get all the help you need. Scenery is my favorite part as with many of the people here. We would love to help you learn what we know, and then watch you get better at doing it than we are.
You can buy a really cheap bag of lichen…and similar goodies at Michael’s (the craft store)…
www.kalmbach.com has a lot of books on scenery and scenery techniques some of them can be made from stuff laying around the house…scenery is a very broad subject so i’d suggest getting a book or two on scenery so you can learn the techniques …chuck
thanx guys, what I have is Life-Likes double train express and its really fun to play with but it just looks really dull! and when I go to the local hobbytown retailer I look for like ballast,crossings, lichen and the works but I dont crap money because there really expensive!
consider a few mountains and valleys first. They are cheep and help a lot quickly. For my first mountain I got paper towels from a men’s room at a grocery store. My dad bought me a sack of plaster of paris and I started to learn.
We all know how expensive it can be in this hobby…what i did when i was your age was go out and find all sorts of odd jobs, save my money, and then purchase the things I needed when i had enough money to buy the item i wanted…sometimes it takes a long time to save that kind of money but if you work hard enough you’ll get it…chuck
and I look at all thes other peoples railroads and there so darn good I mean my dream railroad is to make a really cool moutainous woodland scenic railroad and even though Im 14 and work at burger king my daily wage just lets me get a little its so darn difficult but I love this hobby to death, I also wish I were like an adult so I could make the layout of my dreams because I would have a better paying job so I could actually beef up my railroad!
For trees start in the woods looking for weeds. This is the season. Get a can of cheap green spray paint and you can get tolerable trees. My 7 YO grand daughter made some great pines alla Aggro last week. The cost was about a nickle a tree.
yeah but I dont even have wood under my layout all I have is carpet
my locomotives are a Sante Fe F7 and a Union pacific 0-4-0 with about 30 rolling stock.
hows about you guys?
I found a piece of foam along the highway. That would have made a good base, but I used it for foam mountains. I am still learning that.A cheap piece of ply wood also will help. That is what I used a age 14. It took a couple weeks on the paper route, but it held my first three layouts quite nicely.
I stated with an 0-4-0. There were no diesels then. I had a box car, a tank car and a caboose. My next purchase was 2 ore cars. My pride and joy now is a brass three truck shay my wife bought me for my 35th Bday. Good luck. You can learn this and get more by age 20 than I had. You can not get more by age 15 than I have at age 70. It takes longer than that.
Hay Reeves, try this link. http://www.fcsme.org/bcarl/basic_scenery.htm
It’s very easy to understand, that’s a plus for me, because I’m just a stupid redneck.
I know you are looking for instant gratification, but you are just blowing butt smoke in the wind and wasting our time until you a) have a space you can put a permanent layout and b) build your bench work. Even small railrads take years to build.
And none of that can be done without a plan. So read. Come up with a plan. And post the plan here.
For this phase it does not cost anything. Get the books at the library. If they don’t have them you can get them throught interliabrary loan.
There are a couple of free designe programs availible on the web. Download them and work out a plan.
Then come back to us.
I dont think mom and dad are going to be happy with plaster scenery on the carpet. Be patient. Maybe some building kits would add to the fun. There are some inexpensive ones that are quite nice. Stay away from the preformed tunnels, they really look toylike on a scale RR.
Come up with a plan !!!. In order for us to be of help you must decide what you want in a layout. What scale are you in? For benchwork you could get a peice of 3/4 inch plywood and put a few sawhorses under it. Also you have to decide were you are gonig to base the scenery is it going to be the desert or the mountains? I am 13 and startimng my second layout. So come back when you have a plan [8D] Tim