I,m in an area where there is no train hobby shop close by, so I have to use what I can purchase close by. I found two types of material for supposely use for scenery. Cellfoam and Foamboard. I not sure if either one of these material would be good to use on the layout, as far as design of hills, mountains, buildings, building support, track layout. Both the cellfoam and foamboard is available from Hobby Lobby.
if anyone has knowledge of these material as far as train layout useage, please post your suggestions.
Not familiar with cellfoam. If it is like floral foam, very light, fine celled, ridgid foam, some folks use it to carve rock formations. Not for use as a layout base.
Foamboard, if it’s the layer of foam with a paper coating on both sides, several uses for this. Some use it for roads, as a solid sheet under a yard, making buildings or viewblocks in buildings.
A craft store can have many useful items, you just have to look around and see what they have. Decorative sand, loads and some use it for ballast. The floral dept may have materials that you can use for tree armatures. Craft section may have wood strips, tacky glue and a variety of other adhesives. Craft paints are inexpensive, come in a wide range of useful colors and are easy to work with. In the same area you will find a selection of brushes.
A building supply store can provide you with the materials needed to make your layout base. Lumber, extruded foam (pink or blue) for surface and stacking to make land forms. If you prefer to use a plaster shell over a web of cardboard, they have plaster. You can get scrap cardboard any number of places or use window screen. Builders sand (I think its called) can be used for ballast and other dirt areas. Cheap latex paint is fine to use to paint your backdrop and base layout color.
You can make some of your own scenic materials. Dyed sawdust (dye available at craft stores), can replace some ground foam. You can get poly fiber at a craft store, may need to dye it. Scout your yard or near by woods for twigs that can be tree armatures.
May need to buy some things through an on line or call in store. I call my orders in, know what they have and can talk to an actual person when ordering. There are a number of them advertising in our host magazine and others. I have had excellent luck with MB
I’m sure this has been shared many times, but you can make your own ground foam. I have tried using the floral foam for ground foam as well and I didn’t like the result as much as foam rubber. The biggest challenge to me is to get fine ground foam-you can sift the end product but it takes time.
Plaster of Paris and drywall joint compound are also useful materials for scenery work and are available at craft stores and Walmart.
I also use various colors of soil, sometimes sifted to get the texture I want, always baked to kill any nasties and shaken with a magnet to catch any bits that might get sucked up into loco motors.
If you dont have a hobby shop do you have a Michaels Craft Store or similar nearby, they often sell alot of building materials (paints, basswood, balsa wood) even scenery materials (trees,lichens) via the school project “Build a California Mission kits”, at least out here all the Michaels have them.
Look for Dollhouse suppliers for building material, floral arraingment shops for lichens, twigs for tree assembly, even some types of dried branches can be used outright for trees, and mosses.
Alternate, go to your library see if they have any old, I mean OLD model railroading books, which give all the Old School means of scenery making back before there were any hobby shops as we know them today. I have 2 of these oldster books, most usefull.
Celluform, if its like Sculptaform is a paper mache based product, sort of like plaster of paris but less messy, it works well but takes forever to dry and doesnt carve well at all so use it only where your going to scenery over.
Foamboard is great for model buildings and other structrures if you know how to use it, or as a substraight for traditional hill making technics but you could use cardboard for alot less $.
I highly recommend Sculptamold for constructing scenery. It is easy to use, has a fairly long working time (20 to 30 minutes), and is easy to modify. It takes paints and stains readily. It’s easy to form by hand or tool and can be rewetted for additional working later. I’ve gone through 150 lbs or so of it.
Here are a couple of pics.
The hill in the background is Sculptamold, with some embedded Hydrocal rocks, brushed with acrylics for color.
Everything that isn’t obviously wood is Sculptamold used to blend together the terrain over the cookie-cutter tabletop around my turntable. It’s really versatile stuff and available through any good art supplies source (although you may have to order the 50 lb package, but it’s way cheaper than in smaller quantities.)
The LION goes out and finds ROCKS and uses them on the layout. Sure they are heavy, but you don’t have to build them or paint them. Just set them on your layout, pour some dirt around them (Actually the LION uses crumbled brick dust for this) put some ground cover with some greenish-brown-yellow paint on it and you have made a scene!
