The C&NW trestle article in June MR may get me started on my first scratch-building project. What’s the best way to get a good creosote look on the wood, and where can I find nut and bolt castings?
Grandt Line makes nut and bolt castings. If your LHS doesn’t have them, try Walthers.
Enjoy
Paul
Micro-Mark sells a product that is supoposed to give wood an aged, creosote look, but I don’t remember what it is called. Try searching their website, www.micro-mark.com
I’ve just used a thin wash of black acrylic paint on my timbers, mostly because of how cheap and easy it is. Probably, though, there is a dark varnish or somesuch that someone knows about, which will impart not only the dark color, but also bring out the grain and add a little bit of the oily gloss to boot. It will take some experimenting, since the species of wood you’re using will make a difference as well (basswood is more like a yellow pine color, while balsa is much more pale and reddish). You might even find that a darker specialty wood, like walnut, works well, though securing it might be difficult and expensive.
The stuff from MicroMark is called Railroad Tie and Bridge Stain, item # 81721. They also have a product called Age-It Easy, product # 81528, that is a weathering treatment for raw wood.
I have had varying degrees of success with these two products. Both sometimes require more than one coat, depending on the density of the wood you’re working with. before you get the desired effect.
If you don’t have hundreds of linear feet of wood to stain, you can try Minwax Wood Finish Stain Markers available at Home Depot or similar building materials suppliers. These are metal tubes somewhat like a magic marker, with a broad felt tip. They come in many different colors and may be cheaper than purchasing a bottle of stain from MicroMark.
Having built trestles from both stripwood and styrene, I have to say styrene is a far better material (in my experience) to use for building trestles. It cuts nicely, glues nicely, and is not near as delicate as a stripwood trestle.
And you can “stress” and paint the styrene to look just like wood, as this photo atests:
Or click here to see a larger image:
http://siskiyou.railfan.net/images/train/p09.jpg
I “stressed” the styrene timbers first with sandpaper, then painted and weathered the bridge with acrylics.
I’m building some trestles for an N scale logging layout using birch twigs. I have some photos of trestles on some logging lines up here in the north that show them built with what appears to be unpeeled logs.
My lumbering experience is limited to cutting the firewood to heat our house & I know what standing, unpeeled dead trees look like after a couple of years of moisture & insects. Given that the expected useful life spans of some of the timber land was only a few years, would the trestles be built with a short life in mind?
Some of the low, long trestles were removed as fill was brought in to provide a more permanant road bed so it may seem like they might be built on the cheap.
Is peeling birch twigs a silly waste of time when there are logs to get off the mountain?
Wayne