There is one area on my layout that I'm thinking of putting in a cut stone or brick man-made retaining wall. What material and procedure have you used to accomplish this. As you see it will be a long wall (where the black board is mounted) Photos as examples would be helpful. Thanks
There are several options that can be used to make this type of retaining wall. 1) a plastic sheet such as - Plastic Sheet -- Random Cut Stone - from Kibri - these can be easily painted and look pretty good after construction. 2) Depending on the height of this wall - item number 186-2700 from Brawa would look pretty good here. 3) item number 528-34874 or 528-34876 or better yet since it is longer item number 528-34877 Any of these retaining walls would be good. These are made by Noch. 4) Item number 195-601 from Blair Line would work well if it was a concrete retaining wall. 5) Brawa used to make plastic sheets that were made to simulate rock walls I believe they were strene. I have used them before with good results. 6) Faller makes some decorative sheets that are masonry as well. I have not used this before though. 7) Faller also makes Arch Arcades that perhaps might be combined to form a larger wall. item numbers 272-272600, 272-272601, 272-272640 272-272602, 272-272594 8) Faller also makes tunnel wall cards that come in natural stone colors. These could be used by themselves or combined with strene in order to make more supporting structure. 9) Create a blasted rock wall look by using plaster. All of these above part numbers are from Walthers.com I have personally used options 1, 5, 8 and 9. Although none of my retaining walls was this long I think these items would work well for you. The bottom "step" in this picture shows you what one of the plastic stone retaining walls looked like after installation. Paper retaining walls from Faller used as tunnel liners: Personally since your wall is so long I would go with a blasted look and make it out of plaster. Similiar to: Hope this helps. I believe 'Powersteamguy1790' has some really long retaining walls on his layout and has really good photos of them in his gallery. Mr X
Nice looking layout Mr.X :thumbs_up: I've used many different materials for brick. I used paper here the red,& the grey at the bottom under the bridge is Woodland Scenic. This wall is made from hydrostone & a mold.Please excuse the cracks,I got sick before I could touch it up. You can see the 2nd level in the background was finished.
The most realistic product I have ever used are EZ-Stack blocks. They are so easy to use, I even scratch build all of my bridge abutments from them. They are decomposed granite blocks that I use ACC glue to assemble. This is one of my abutments. You can buy them from TexNrails using this link: http://www.texnrails.com/catalog/catresults.asp?cat=Scenery&mfg=TMS&itype=EZ_Stack_Blocks&scale=A&NRO=ON
Here are two real world examples: http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=93473 http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=47777
I like these blocks from Hunter Scenery http://huntersceneryco.com/catalog/c18_p1.html It's more time consuming laying the individual blocks, but you can make curved or terraced-stepped walls and there's not a lot of waste or joints to hide like the sheet products.
Mr. X - great looking layout and thanks for the detailed options on making the wall plus the manufactures and item numbers. Mike - I hope you're feeling better and I really like the cut stone wall (even with the crack) Bob - talk about looking realistic! Amazing bridge abutments. After seeing your results, I'm going to try making some of them for my bridges. Nelson & Bob - Thanks for the link on where to purchase the blocks. My wife is a 3rd grade teacher and every years her students make maps of china. She wants me to purchase them so that her class can use the blocks to represent the "Great Wall of China" on their maps. And Tony - thanks for the real world photos of retaining walls. Everyone has given me great options for the wall and how to construct them. Now I have an idea on how to proceed.
Well I guess I can take that one of two ways. I could say thank you I am glad you liked them, and the other is maybe I need to revisit my monthly budget and include allocations for a bodyguard or two.:teeth: I was never overly successful at making rubber molds of rock faces (or rock walls in this case) but you might be more successful at it than I have been. What I might suggest is buying one of the 3D plastic styrene pieces that is embossed with the texture of the rock that you want. Then create a rubber mold off the plastic piece, that way you only have to buy one styrene sheet. Of course you could buy any of these other suggested materials and do something similar. I am not a lawyer but I think as long as you did not reproduce them commercially and only used them for your own personal use I do not see how it would violate any copyright issues with the product. Mr X
