I would like to build things to go into my N-Scale layout, like a-few grain silose, cant spell, and how about telephone polls, and the larger power lines. Loading dock, ect, What did you model/build, and what did you use to make it material wise. Scenery&Buildings How to make from? I'm looking for a way to create scenery,as in trees, rocks, cliffs, ect and buildings, ect from things laying around the house. I was thinking of haveing a caracell, or roundhouse, would this look stupid with modern loco's? I do plan on some steam engins some day. Where can I get a cheep, but good roundhouse, or are they more trouble than they are worth? So far all I have is a oval of track, and a few turnouts, I have no swich machines yet. not shure if I'll use remote or get some manual swichs...Hwehmmm Code 80 all the way.... Got to get about 20 sections of flex track, and afew more turnouts, more wood, and 8 6" L-brackets......I got plenty of 1"3/4 wood screws.... And I have seen the paper models, but getting the deminsions right, whew..
Most engine terminals no longer have a turntable, and diesel sheds are usually rectangular. There are some turntables and roundhouses left, it seems mostly at major shops.
I bought an old soft-plastic toy log cabin for 10 cents at a garage sale, made a new roof of styrene, painted aluminum foil in miscellanous rust colors, cut into small pieces and Gooed(r) them on roof to build a model of a relatively modern teme restaurant that is an imitation of an old time joint. I used the plastic top of a box of raisins as a base, then plastic-cemented sides made of scribed styrene and posts cut from styrene rod, to make a heavy equipment unloading dock at a tractor and implement dealer. A 1/720 scale Harbor crane from a Japanese naval yard scene was unraveled and had thin-sheet styrene parts added to made the gravel tipple at J.J.Stone gravel works. A piece of packing styrofoam cut to shape with ballast glued to it made the gravelpile. The round stone things over the entrance to the school were cut from fiber washers. I copied scale plans of a building from a model magazine, figured the copying rate to change them to my scale. Mounted on cardboard and added paper printed w/ brick pattern and a few pieces of cardboard painted stone color to make stone lintels for Johnston High School, home of the Lumberjacks
Wow again, now that is some engineering their, Thanks for the ideas. Now if I only had some ink for my printer..
Using scale plans from the Colorado Railroad Museum, I scratch built the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel out of styrene and commercially available windows and doors. Erik
I scratchbuild a lot--buildings, ships, bridges, cranes, among other items. I don't have time this week to describe all my methods, which range from wrapping a box with printed paper to building a large freighter, which uses every technique I know about. Plastic sheets and shapes, brass sheets and shapes, wire, paper, wood, thread, metals, purchased and my own castings--I use them all. I also use a lot of weeds for trees. If you look through my blog (link below) or my Railimages albums (link also below), you can see most of them. Many times in my blog I describe at least partially how I built them. Please feel free to ask questions here in this thread, rather than as comments in the blog or albums if you want the quickest response. Because of the volume of email that I have to deal with, I don't usually subscribe to threads, blogs nor albums.
Take a look at the shape of things.Everything can be broken down into it's basic shape(s).Is it a cylinder, a sphere, a cube,etc?.With this mindset, everyday objects take on a different appeal.PVC pipe can be used to build silos,round toothpicks are a good starting point for telephone poles.The steel mill that I scratchbashed started with a toilet flush valve,a plastic milk bottle and some CPVC fittings.Once you start looking at things this way,the opportunities are limitless.At least those are the syptoms of my affliction,heh heh. The talls stacks are PVC pipe with the bottoms of the plastic gumball machine containers affixed to the top.The small roof vents are lead pellets for an air rifle and the square building is a wood 2x2 covered in plastic sheet.The ventilators on the green building are caps from magic markers cut down and affixed to plastic slabs.The window mullions are fiberglass drywall seam tape with the plastic from a cake cover glued behind.I believe that being resourceful like this can be a lot of fun.I would estimate I have less than $30 u.s. in this module's structures.
