Yay! I’m not the only one who’s used popsicle sticks. Those buildings look better then any thing i’ve done. Here’s a handy hint regarding popsicle sticks- cut of the rounded ends, it makes them look more like big boards.
Red Horse: You have lots of creative genius and I look forward to seeing more of your work. You re right, and you will be amazed a how fast with this practise that your skills will improve. It is all practice and we all go through it.
One thing I might add is if you have a convenience store in your area or a supplier to such outlets, you can get similar sticks to popsicle sticks but they are narrower and a little longer. They are usually used for coffee stirers, (not the plastic ones) and they are also used on those corn dogs or pogos. I’m sure if you talked to the manager of one of those outlets you could work out a purchase or deal. They would get your planks down to a more reasonable (more acurate) size. If not available, then try just cutting the ones you have in half or just score them to make it look like they are seperate boards. The round ends have to go other than for a sign or something.
If you have chosen an era (time period) that you would like to model, there are all kinds of books available as well as searching them out on the internet. If your era is in the present time, then get your camera out and take pictures of the buildings that you like when see in your travels .
Hope this adds to your perspective, I really like your start, keep it up and keep us posted.
Hope the weather doesn’t get to rough for you. It has been quite some winter this past couple of weeks everywhere. It sounds like you have snow up to your ying-yang.
On a side note-Stop eating so many Popsicles or you’ll end up spending all your money on insulin instead of trains.[;)] I agree about using the little wooden coffee stirrers.
I’m happy that others here like my ideas, now I’m not trying to be different I just don’t have the kind of money to buy prefabs or kits, so I spend what I have for my hobby on military train cars off ebay and I’m piecing together a nice Army train to park in my HO scale army base.
I just finished 4 quanset huts for the base, I cut industrial sized hand towel card board rolls into two half cylinders, painted them OD green with black rivets and can park army tanks in such in both open ends.
I will post picks on the base secition very soon.
thanks for the good words, it makes me feel good that others enjoy my rail road on a budget!!!
I like these. They’re not realistic, but I don’t think you were going for that. As you said, they are fun and relaxing craft projects that look interesting when they’re done.
( And y’know, when it comes to realism and plausibility, the designs you’ve come up with here are no worse, and probably better, than several craftsman-kit structures advertised in recent hobby magazines, that sell for > $100. I sometimes wonder if the designers of stuff like that ever saw a real building. )
Projects like this are good practice for any scale modeling you might want to do in the future. When you think about it, Jack Work’s trestles and coaling tower are just a matter of cutting and gluing sticks together. Somebody good at building stuff from toothpicks or stirring sticks would have very little trouble taking on something like that. I think you might find Harvey Weiss’ book, HOW TO RUN A RAILROAD, very interesting.
Now on to specific comments:
-I like the prison entrance. Very STAR TREK of you, but perhaps more DOCTOR WHO. It needs some Daleks. EX-TER-MI-NATE THE RI-VET COUN-TERS. I note, though, that you might wa
Of course the Gods are crazy, after all they like a sureal layout as much as the next God.
I like to think of my work as Cartooney in the world of Jesses mind…it is a strange place to be.
It all comes down to fun and what I have available for materials at the time of insperation.
I will build a bigger Prisoner gate to fit my train through, thanks for the idea!.
Realisum…whats that??? LOL!
My Grand sons get a kick out of this and they are working on a few houses themselves, one is working in glued penny’s stacked and the other is building a house out of painted dominos, should be cool when done.
they like the fact that this can be done and when I showed them the big buck real looking layouts they said “We like ours better”, " because we can’t see this stuff everyday".
As long as they are having fun this will be some great memories for us in years to come!
Of course, don’t limit yourself. Realism is fun, too. Sometimes reality can be quite surreal. For instance, consider the 1877 Point Bridge in the city of Pittsburgh, which was a Victorian gyascutus of truly wondrous horror.
(small photo; I wish I could find a really good one. It makes your flag-bridge look commonplace. It’s the one with the towers.)
Another 19th-century masterwork which we’d never believe as a model, but which is quite notoriously real,is the Ypsilanti, MI water tower, which I am not going to post a photo of, this being a family-oriented board.
But still, remember that there is also fun in building something that looks perfectly normal and real. Be sure to try it if you want a little change of pace sometime.
Thanks for the pic Auto Bus, now when the day comes that my skills catch up to my desires then maybe I will be able to do a “real scene” until then I’m stuck with my Cartoon abilities, I do love the pics of the real life scenes…some day.
