Hints & Tips No.930

Bringing Kits to Life


From Lionel Strang (Canada)


You can individualise kits very well by doing several things. You could assemble a kit with one or two doors open to simulate activity, board up a window or two with stripwood or masking tape to represent plywood. A real-world building such as a goods shed along side the track stands an excellent chance of having its windows smashed by flying ballast.

I also generally overpaint the factory colours with at least a matt black wash or do a total repaint to your own scheme which should be less garish colours than selected by many manufacturers. Discreet placement of signs certainly individualise the buildings. After weathering the building, I add barrels, boxes, figures,vending machines and anything else appropriate. I glue some of these details in place, but I can remove the others if I want to give the building and the activity around it a different look.

Hints & Tips No.931

Gluing Paper or Wood and Styrene

From Graham Ross (Adelaide)

When gluing wood and Styrene together, I prefer to use 5 minute epoxy. I keep a pad of sticky notes and toothpicks handy. Its easy to mix small amounts, apply, then throw away sticky note and toothpick and gives a strong bond.

Hints & Tips No.932

Laying Track on Foam
From Jere Ingram (California)

I have had good success laying cork and then track directly to foam with Liquid Nails for foam board. More recently folks have been using a product known as Gorilla glue to attach foam to other materials. If used per instructions, Gorilla glue will expand so use it carefully in your application.

Hints & Tips No.933

Making Arches for Buildings

From Bob Heath (Spain)

Making arches to fit over the tops of windows and doors can be tricky. Here is an easy and quick way of making semi-circular arches:

Step 1: Using a pair of dividers, mark two concentric circles on a piece of .020� plastikard, the inner one being the radius of your window arch, the outer being your choice of arch width.

Step 2: Mark a parting line across the diameter using the centre point as a guide. Then scribe stones or bricks around the arch. Cut out carefully with scissors.

Step 3: Snap carefully across the parting line.

Step 4: Part the arches from the centres with the tip of a craft knife. Tidy up with a small file or sandpaper and your arches are ready to be glued in place on your model.

Hints & Tips No.934

Making Guttering

From Bob Heath(Spain)

Suitably U-shaped plastikard for making gutters for buildings is neither easy to come by nor cheap if you can find any.

An easy way to make pieces as you need them is to use a scraper. A small screwdriver makes the ideal basis for a scraper, but any suitably shaped piece of metal will do. Grind or file the blade off then shape the end so that it is roughly square in section. Then round off the end on two of the opposite sides so that it has a U-shaped cross section of the size you want your guttering to be.


Then take a piece of .040" (1mm) plastikard and run the scraper along near the edge, guiding it against a steel ruler. Don't try to go to deep; just make several passes until you reach the depth you want. Cut the gutter off and round over the edges by scraping with a craft knife blade. Alternatively, you can leave one side of the gutter long enough to glue beneath the eaves, making fixing in place simple.

You may find that an occasional quick touch with a small file may help to keep the scraper nice and sharp. Also, bear in mind that plastikard responds well to scraping and other shapes can be made quite quickly with suitably shaped scrapers. :?: You could make your own simulated tongue and groove cladding out of plain plastikard sheet, for instance.

Hints & Tips No.935

Making A Level Crossing Board

From Robert Ferrus (New Jersey)

I needed the wood that is used at a crossing that lay's between the rails. So I happened to have some thin Balsa wood and using a pencil, brown marker, and a Xacto knife I made my own. I cut to fit and used the pencil to make it look like boards. The marker to make it look like the weathered wood.

Hints & Tips No.936




Trimming Glue Bottle Brushes

From Graham Ross (Adelaide)




Glue bottles are often fitted with brushes but they are usually very wide. If you trim the ends of the glue bottle brushes to a point, they work much better for precise applications.

Hints & Tips No.937

Using Single Edged Razor Blades for Scratchbuilding

From Dave Tierney (New South Wales)

I cut styrene parts by scoring with a Single Edge Razor Blade. A razor or utility knife blade is .5mm thick. An exacto blade is .4mm thick and a SERB is .005mm thick. Cutting with anything thicker than a SERB will leave a ridge on the cut edge and will have to be sanded. After scoring, bend at score line. .3mm (015”) parts can be cut with one or 2 passes of a single edge razor blade. A SERB can be difficult to hold by itself, but you can make a holder from an old spade bit by grinding off the tip, and drilling a 3mm hole to accept a small machine screw. Attach the blade with a screw and nut.

Hints & Tips No.938

Cutting Styrene Easily

From Ross Adams (Melbourne)

When cutting styrene, one of the most aggravating things is to have your straight edge slip, resulting in a ruined piece. If you clamp at least one end of your straight edge to your cutting surface, this can be avoided. You can also glue sandpaper to the bottom of your straightedge for a non-slip surface.

Hints & Tips No.939

Using and Scaling Building Papers

From Noel James (New South Wales)

Printable shingle building sides and flooring templates for label paper should come out correctly sized. To print, enlarge pic to full size, right click, and then click on print picture. Set your printer on best quality. Use felt tip markers on label paper edges to keep white from showing. Make sure that shingles have bottom edge (shadowed) on bottom of roof sections.

In time, label paper may come loose as the adhesive is not totally “bomb proof”. A thinned coat of contact cement on the surface of your styrene or card will prevent this.

Hints & Tips No.940

Kit and Scratchbuilding Construction Techniques

From Gary Sexton (Indiana)

Take the time to do careful measurements on parts. All wall ends on sheet styrene should have a 45° angle for proper joints. This is best done with a sanding jig if you can make one. If you do not want to sand wall ends, and do butt joints with corner trim, be sure to adjust wall dimensions accordingly.

Use a plastic solvent cement such as MEK. Some Glues such as Testors plastic cement as joints have been known to come apart in a few years. For wood to plastic joints use CA (super glue) or 5 minute epoxy.

Hints & Tips No.941

Making Coloured Plaster Pt 1

From Donald Miller ( California)

I like to color plaster to a natural earth tone, before doing any scenery work. This accomplishes 2 things.
1. It avoids the "ugly" white glare that would have to be tolerated until the other scenery work is accomplished. I work on my layout in fits of one hour, or less, until the next honey-do. Sometimes it might have to look 'blah' for a week or two.
2. It provides a base color upon which I can build the scenery. If I miss a small spot, the 'show through' is a natural earth color.

I have found Burnt Umber as the tone that suits my eye best. The latex spray paint "Panama Canal Beige" by Krylon in the US seems to be about right. The only things that I do not like about the spray is it is impossible to do small areas without some over spray and it has a slight sheen. The sheen goes away with time but I'd prefer none.

Hints & Tips No.942

Making Coloured Plaster Pt 2

From Donald Miller ( California)

What I am about to write about is a variation on posts by others about coloring plaster with dry powders.

In seeking to get around my 2 dislikes, I thought I would use a tip from this forum about using contractor's grout coloring to color the plaster before applying it. Great idea! - but expensive because of the quantities that must be purchased for such a small job. I explained my dilemma to a young clerk in the paint department at Home Depot. She suggested using their all medium liquid tint. The all medium is important as it must dissolve in water. I bought a tube, and hurried home and proceeded to make brown water with the tint. I used this water to mix up a batch of plaster of paris. It worked! And the dried finished product was the color I had hoped for.

Then I really got tricky. I had an area where I had used surgical plaster cloth (same as WS plaster cloth at 1/3 the price). It had dried to the unwanted glaring white - and some of the gauze meshing showed through. An overcoat of brown plaster was obviously needed. I mixed another batch of PofP, with the brown water. This time the consistency was suitable for applying with a paint brush (one of the .79 brushes from HD). The white stuff got an overcoat of brown and looks fine. And, the brush marks look similar to the striations found in earthen cliffs, etc. A bonus result.

Hints & Tips No.943

Making Stained Glass Windows

From Kevin Ramm (South Wales)

I set about modifying the windows in the Metcalfe Church, ( Or any other model for that matter). I had a look at the church windows and thought “they would look better in colour”. I measured the actual size of the windows Next find suitable windows of the same shape on the internet, I found some of mine here Stained glass - Wikipedia but if you google “stained glass windows” there are thousands of sites. When all the required windows were resized I printed them onto heavy duty glossy photo paper, leaving a decent amount of room between each photo for trimming.

I copied the relevant photos to my hard drive and cropped them to size using “Paint Shop Pro”. If you prefer you could print them onto transparencies. The windows were then constructed as per the Metcalfe instructions and the Metcalfe windows were substituted with the new ones

Hints & Tips No.944

Weathering Solution

From Robert Heath (Spain)

If you want to add a bit of weathering, making things look dirty or well used, things like pavements, walls, concrete etc then try this, it's FREE.




Find a small glass container, or plastic, put some water in it and whenever you do any work with water colours, doesn't matter what colour, use the water in the container as the first cleaner for your paint brush. After a while this water will become a muddy, grey, horrible messy colour but ideal for a spot of weathering. If whatever it is that you are weathering has highlights then put a wash of the mucky stuff on then lightly wipe it off again to see the effect.

Hints & Tips No.945

Cleaning Air Brushes

From Craig Kirkman (Melbourne, Australia)

I got tired of repeatedly cleaning my airbrushes when doing painting an weathering so I spent a few dollars more and bought a couple … well actually four… for the most often used colours in my area, Black, Red, Royal Blue and Gold. However they also need cleaning up at the end of any session. Watching the painters at one of my previous work places I adapted their practice for cleaning brushes.

Get a small container and put thinners into it complete with your air brush nozzles, put the lid on and blue tack it to your washing machine when you have a load. Timing of your paint tasks is all important in this exercise as you can see. Run your washing load and the effect on your airbrushes is the equivalent of ultrasonic cleaning! Before you take your washing out, un-blue tack your container and your brushes should be perfectly clean! Now who said we could not multi task in Model Railways?

Hints & Tips No.946

Charcoal

From Robert Heath (Spain)

In this day and age where real coal is not so easily available then crushed charcoal is a good replacement. If you do not have a BBQ then I am sure a friend must have one so smile nicely and cadge a big chunk. Charcoal can be crushed to many degrees of fineness and in a coarse form used for coal on locomotives, coal bunkers, staithes, steam locomotive standing grounds by engine sheds etc. It will also reduce to a fine powder for use as a weathering agent, also to colour track to show coal residue and general filth. Handy stuff.

Hints & Tips No.947

Tools in Model Railway Scratchbuilding Pt 1

From Several Modellers

If you want to scratchbuild your first task is to obtain some basic tools and items needed including the following…

Hobby knives, cutting boards, adhesives, files, miter chop cutters,
The following are all useful
A good task light - For some this is probably one of the most important.
An Optivisor or magnifying headpiece
A steady table or workbench – One of us has a 5' lightweight plastic table that I bought at Costco for ~$30. It gives me plenty of room to spread out.
A machinist's or try square - For square up walls and joints and for making perpendicular cuts
Various size clamps - The small Quick-Grip clamps are quite handy
Pin vise - For wire gauge drill bits (#61-#80)
A pair of calipers - Either dial or digital. These come in handy for measuring styrene or metal stock and for making sure you have the right wire gauge
drill bit in your pin vise before you drill.

Hints & Tips No.948

Tools in Model Railway Scratchbuilding Pt 2

From Several Modellers

Further tools would include

A razor saw
A pin vise and a set of numbered drills.
2-56 tap
Small combination square
Dremel tool with a set of bits.
Vice
Good lights
Set of jewelers screw drivers
Centre punch
250g/8oz ball pein hammer
set of needle files
a flat mill file
pair of dividers

Hints & Tips No.949

Stopping Goods Wagons "Lurching" When In Traffic

From Trevor Gibbs

Sometimes wagons will lurch back and forth when being hauled by your favourite loco and give a fairly unrealistoc effect. This will work for a range of vehicles in a number of scales. If your last vehicle is a brakevan, a possible solution would be to glue a bronze "skate" between the frame and the rail which will create a limited amount of drag. If you are running a modern layout, then have such a "skate" on the last vehicle.

You could get really inventive and put a track cleaning device such as a pinned floating piece of masonite or similar keeping an easy drag on the surface to keep the train stretched and kill two birds with one stone