Currently I am in the scenery stages of my 4x8 Nscale layout. In one part there is a steep hill that needs a retaing wall. I thought a concret retaining wall would look nice but I can’t seem to kind any concret retaining walls either at LHS or online. The lengh the wall needs to run is about 1-2 feet. I was thinking of making reuseble molds out of styrene and pouring some kind of plaster into the mold. My question is: Has anyone tried this technic of building molds or are there companies that sell concret retaining walls that I have missed.
You didn’t say how high a wall you needed so I’ll give you several recommendations. I’m an HO guy but I believe all of these are available in N as well. Woodland Scenices makes a nice plaster retaining wall system. I believe there are six sections per box. Depending on how tall you want your wall, you can set the rectangular sections vertically or horizontally. If you need a low retaining wall, you might want to consider Walthers modular foundation walls. They could easily be converted to low retaining walls by trimming the top tabs.
Also remember that you can use retaining walls from a different scale to get the size you need. I used the WS N scale retaining walls where I needed a lower wall but not as low as the modular foundation walls. You could just as easily use an HO scale wall if it has the dimensions you need.
I have made them of wood and painted them with gray DRYLOK, a latex paint used for sealing concrete block basements. It contains concrete in the paint. Don’t try to use it in an airbrush though.
I have several stone wall molds from Dave Frary, at www.mrscenery.com. Unfortunately, the last time I looked, they were no longer in his catalog. He answers e-mails, though, and he may still have a few available. This is my favorite, which I cast in Hydrocal and then curved around a form before it hardened:
It came out like this, after I cut it down:
Another source is Bragdon Enterprises, www.bragdonent.com. He has numerous rock wall molds available. I’ve got a rock face from him, and it’s a really good mold. This site gives sizes and shows photos, so it’s easy to find what you want.
Went to a show last year, but unfortunately missed the scenery clinic, they are usually basic, but very informative. Talked to the fellow that runs them and he showed me a couple of quick, easy tricks, very nice of him.
One of them was for a stone wall/retaining wall. He cut a piece of insulation board (blue or pink) to the shape he wanted, then he took a pen and scribed the stones on the wall. I’d think it would work for concrete too, just don’t scribe the stones in, just some fine form lines. Some textured paint would give good texture, but be sure to use one that won’t eat the foam or paint the foam with a latex paint first, to protect it.
This “concrete” retaining wall is made from plastic “For Sale” signs from the hardware store. I cut the plastic into strips and glued with PVC pipe cement. If I were to do it over, I would have made thicker verticle ribs by doubling the verticle pieces with one on top of the other. I sprayed some “speckle” paint on it, and then weathered with acrylic paint. It was inexpensive.
You may see a stone concrete wall in the right of the photo seperating the highest track level from the middle track that is descending to the right.
I’ve always used Evergreen sheet and strip styrene to build mine.
You have to remember that a retaining wall is going to be site specific… sometimes we rely too much on “off the rack” solutions that force the terrain to conform to a structure. In nature, it always works the other way around. You’ll have a more realistic scene if you construct your retaining wall to meet the requirements of the situation.
My recently demo’t HO layout had all kinds of retaining walls, running about 5 feet in total. Most was from “kitbashed” store bought retaining walls, resembling rock, or cut stone, or wood timbers, or poured concrete. Basically I would cut a piece of masonite to fit the area to be retained, and then would glue in the type of retainer I wanted to use.
In one section, I experimented by making my own wall out of small stones - like the ones used on tarred flat roofs. Again, I cut out the masonite, applied some all purpose glue (you could use caulk or whatever), and lay the stones on top. Once dried, I painted with various shades of grey, and added some thin trails of glue to which green groundcover was applied.
To make a long story short, there are all kinds of retaining walls in use over the last hundred years, and you have plenty of materials to draw from your well stocked LHS.
On my fingers 1foot = 300mm which in N is 150 scale feet, 50 yards or three 50ft boxcars… and you may have twice that length… Which is quite a lot of visual impact… depending a bit on how high the wall is.
To answer the original question the easiest thing to do is to use slices of plywood, Almost anything thicker than 3mm will do… because it is the face of a hill you can support it with wood blocks any way you want inside the hill.
A 3mm ply is an 18" wall and will support itself to a large extent. It will also hold paint and tend to give the paint a matt appearance more easliy than plastic sheet. Also it won’t crack as a plaster casting might do.
The advantage of thin ply is that you can curve it along the length pretty easily - and also achieve nice smooth curves, That is if you want a curved wall [%-)] OR you can make a stepped wall… or a curved wall with steps…or a stepped wall with curves… or angles… or… [:-,]
The question of the height of the wall isn’t resolved… but a wall of anything more than 4 or 5 feet will usually have a batter to it… that is it will lean back into the hill… at least that is the visual effect… the trouble is that the angle can be quite slight and really not show up in pics of the real thing… but if your model has a wall of any significant height and the face does not lean back it will probably give a wrong impression/look weird. The visual effect can be that a vertical face looks like it is leaning outwards. This can mess up the overall image of your model.
Walls aren’t often curved vertically but the angles sometimes do change… sometimes from sloping back against the hill for most of the height to vertical for a few feet at the top, bottom or both. Walls can also be stepped. The steps come in all sorts of widths and heights. …And, yes the steps ca
