HINTS AND TIPS - THE FOLLOW ON
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Grasses on Rail Lines Pt 1
From John Rumming (Western Australia)
On many shortlines and branch lines, fewer trains and plenty of agricultural traffic conspire to make the track and right-of-way look markedly different than mainlines. In the summer and fall, natural grasses and grain spilled from freight cars grow along and between the rails. Trains running on the line keep the grass height down to only a few inches in the area immediately on the tracks, but along the edge of the ties grass, grains and even cornstalks grow tall.
Last edit: by xdford
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Modeling Grass on litle used lines Pt 2
From Bruce Walton (Wisconsin)
To model grass growing on the line, ballast your track as you would normally. Keep in mind that it's a branch and not a mainline, so ballast coverage won't be as deep. Once dry, add a few tufts of static grass to simulate bunches of weeds or piles of spilled grain that have started to sprout. Use single drops of white glue and a puff of static grass, or commercial grass tufts offered by several manufacturers.
Do not overdo it, add only an occasional tuft between the ties about every 100 scale feet. Make sure they are firmly attached and fully dried before you run trains, and make sure to trim them down with scissors if they brush the underside of your locomotive gearboxes.
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Modeling Statues
From Bruce Walton (Wisconsin)
Statues of all kinds are common in public places, and they're easy to add to any layout. Actual statues are available in some scales, but making your own is easy using a figure from the next larger scale. For example, N Scale modellers can begin with an HO figure, HO modellers can use S or O figures and so on. Statues are usually mounted on a round or square concrete base. More elaborate classical columns and other shapes are also used, and they can be cut from larger-scale tombstones or scratchbuilt from styrene shapes.
Statues are actually cast or carved from various materials, and your model can be painted to match. Concrete and stone statues are typically the same colour as the pedestal. Paint the entire figure and base medium gray, or use a pre-mixed concrete colour, and weather with a light wash of black. For bronze statues, paint the figure dark brown mixed with metallic bronze, then lightly dry brush it with straight bronze paint to bring out the highlights. To simulate a patina finish, use dark and light shades of jade green and turquoise paint. Paint the pedestal gray and attach the figure.
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Modeling Graveyards
From Bruce Walton (Wisconsin)
Trackside cemeteries are common throughout the continent, so why not include one on your layout. They're quickly added to any scene with readily available details. Graveyards are more than just tombstones. Starting from the ground up, a grass mat makes an excellent cemetery lawn. Cut it to fit along the driveways in your scene. In cities and modern cemeteries, many driveways are lined with curbs which are easily modelled by lining the pavement with 6 to 9 scale inch square styrene strips. Surround your scene with a decorative wrought iron fence or brick wall. Several manufacturers make appropriate walls in most scales and several even make fancy entrance gates and arches. Use prototype photos as reference.
Upright tombstones are available in several scales, so add them in rows spaced 10 to 15 scale feet apart. Many post-1960s cemeteries allow only flat grave markers that are flush with the soil. Cut 1 x 2 scale foot rectangles of styrene, paint them gray and place them as you would tombstones. Other details include flowers, easily added using appropriately coloured turf flower materials or kit-built flowers, available from several manufacturers.
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Modeling Track details
From Bruce Walton (Wisconsin)
With every passing wheel, crossing frogs take a beating and require a lot of maintenance—especially on busy lines. Railroads often store extra frog castings nearby in case a quick replacement is needed. Usually, the castings are placed on top of a couple of ties at the edge of the right-of-way or next to the tower (if there is one) so they're handy, but not in the way. On your layout, re-create this detail using a crossing frog casting (available from suppliers of hand laid track products) and paint it rusty brown. Place it on top of a couple of weathered ties along the edge of the right-of-way, but near the crossing. Finish the scene by adding a few tall weeds growing between the ties and up through the rails.
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Using Reflective Surfaces instead of mirrors
From Trevor Gibbs (Melbourne)
Instead of using a mirror to increase apparent size, recycle an old semi reflective cake tray or piece of tinplate. The lessened resolution will give an appearance of even more depth in “the hazy distanceâ€.
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Fading Models
From Bruce Walton (Wisconsin)
Painted surfaces fade with constant exposure to the elements. The change may not be overnight, but over time the difference is very noticeable. On your layout, fading is easy to simulate using an airbrush, flat finish and a few drops of white paint.
Make a special fading wash by mixing three to five drops of flat white paint in a 1oz bottle of clear flat finish. Test it on a scrap piece of styrene painted flat black by masking off half the black area and airbrushing on a light coat of the fading mix. Allow to dry, remove the masking and compare the two sides and you will see the faded side will appear lighter, but still black. If the result is still too dark, apply another coat, but keep in mind that you can lighten up a dark surface, but making it dark again is difficult if not impossible.
Using this method, it is easy to add realism to unit trains for example by fading only a few cars in the consist. The mixture can also be used to tone down bright colours on signs, buildings and vehicles. A couple of things to keep in mind using this technique: mask all windows and have all decals and signs in place before spraying, otherwise they will look too new if applied afterward.
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Hints & Tips No.1017
Big Rocks
From Bruce Walton (Wisconsin)
Many railways that constructed their lines along rivers, streams and ocean shores chose their routes because of the easy grades on the route. The problem many later faced was right-of-way erosion from flowing water. Check out railroad lines along watersheds and you'll see many lined with large crushed rocks called rip-rap. These large stones are usually 1 to 3' in size, depending on class, and are simply piled along the shore to slow water flow.
Rip-rap is easily modelled using crushed rock or talus available from several manufacturers. Choose an area where your tracks run along a body of water, even if it is a dry wash. Cover the shoreline nearest the tracks with 1 to 3' rocks from the water's surface to the height of your subgrade and attach with glue. Use rock that is the correct colour for the area you are modelling, or colour it with scenery colours or an airbrush. Unless the rip-rap represents new construction, add a few plants growing up through the rocks and reeds sticking up from the water's edge.
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Storm Damaged Trees
From Bruce Walton (Wisconsin)
If you live anywhere that the weather can get nasty, chances are you have seen storm-damaged trees. Wind is often the most damaging, breaking branches, stripping foliage or causing the trunk to snap in half — in extreme cases, trees can actually be blown over by strong winds.
These kinds of details are easy to model by simply breaking off a few branches from commercial tees and scattering them nearby. In rural areas, they will stay where they have fallen, but in the city, you can add a few figures picking up or dragging the branches to the street for city crews to pick up.
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Some Ideas for Creating Mini Scenes
From Bruce Walton (Wisconsin)
Put a "For Sale" sign on the windshield of a car, with the seller and an interested buyer standing nearby. Or borrow an idea from the recent "Cash for Clunkers" program with rusty old cars and a large banner displayed in your automobile lot.
Buildings offer many different scenarios too. Figures can be put to work washing windows, painting, sweeping or simply walking through the front door. If you have a newsstand, add figures buying magazines or reading the newspaper.
A dog in the back of a pickup, or chasing the neighbour's cat will liven up any scene. Some manufacturers now offer some of these accessories grouped for your convenience. Or customize your own by combining different figures and vehicles to your liking.
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Various Sized Pipes
From Geoff Stone (Sydney, Australia)
Take the plastic stick from a cotton bud. It is a scale 20' length of 6" diameter pipe. A coat of black paint and you can soon build up a load of pipes. Straws can be used for larger diameters. Those straws with the "bendy bit" in the middle can be used for ducting around fans. Use a punch to cut out flanges from thin plastic card. These can be glued to the plastic sticks.
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Recycling materials for details
From Geoff Stone (Sydney, Australia)
The foil from packs of medicines resembles chequer plate. Cut the material into strips for useful gangways. Plastic containers can be painted to represent oil/water tanks.
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Recycling computers for parts
From Geoff Stone (Sydney, Australia)
Any roadside clear up contains many computers, video recorders and cassete decks. Strip them of screws, motors, bearings, wire, metal contacts and switches. Just having the boxes full of bits makes a great inpression on visitors. You may even find the bits useful.
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Stand Behind the Yellow Line
From Mike Cheesman (Melbourne)
A quick way to add realism to station platforms is with the yellow line. The yellow line indicates to passengers and employees how far back from moving trains to stand for safety. Traditionally, the yellow line is a 3 to 6" wide stripe painted directly on the platform surface for its entire length, parallel to the nearest rail. The line warns people to keep about five feet away from the nearest piece of rail based equipment, or about 10' from the track centreline. This warning, or one very similar, is stencilled in yellow along the line: STAND BEHIND YELLOW LINE.
Adding a warning line to your layout's platforms is easy. Many companies make striping and alphabet decals that are easily applied to platform surfaces. The medium-yellow stripe is usually kept freshly painted, so weather it very lightly. This style of platform marking is ideal for many smaller stations constructed before the 1970s. Platforms built or refurbished in the modern era require more complex markings and texture strips. Older platforms still retain the traditional yellow line because they're grandfathered in.
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A Detail for Servicing Tracks Pre 1975
From Peter Sands
Before the 1970s, service tracks were messy places. Areas where locomotives were parked and serviced were subject to drips and spills. Back then, grease, oil and sand all hit the ground on service tracks. Locomotive sand which fell onto the ballast would absorb oil and grease. This would give the appearance of rails embedded in soft asphalt
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Quick Cracked Windows
From Peter Sands
Abandoned structures or older industrial buildings with large banks of windows often have broken panes. On buildings with plastic window glass already installed, cracks can easily be scratched into the glazing with a hobby knife. Cracks usually have two appearances; a point of impact with crack lines radiating out, or cracks running across the piece of glass from side to side or in an arc. To add cracks, use the sharp point of a hobby knife and gently scratch in lines to simulate the style of crack you want. Don't overdo it, subtlety is key to a convincing effect.
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A Detail for Servicing Tracks Post 1975
From Peter Sands
Cleanup efforts in the 1970s saw fiberglass drip pans and under-track concrete-slab catch basins installed to catch spills for treatment and recycling. There are several designs of drip pans, but most have flat surface between and along the outside of the rails. For ease of shipping and installation, prototype sections are 5 to 20' long. Add a drip pan by cutting a strip of .020" thick sheet styrene to fit between the rails and on top of the ties (leave room for wheel flanges) and a pair of 2-1/2 scale foot wide strips to fit against the outside of the rails. If your service pad handles only one diesel, that's how long your strips should be. Double the length for two diesel lengths and so on.
Scribe lines every 5 to 20' feet to simulate separate sections. Paint one side of the sheets; yellow is typical, although green and medium blue are also seen. Use a single bead of contact cement down the centreline of the sleepers to attach the unpainted side of the wide pan between the rails. The styrene will be held securely in the middle and the edges should ride up slightly on the moulded track spikes, creating a concave surface. Attach the thin pans against the outside of the rails next to the centre pan. Finish your pans by brushing on oil-coloured drips and puddles.
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Mud Pumping
From Greg Aldridge (Victoria)
Look along any railway line anywhere in the world and you will occasionally find areas where the weight of passing trains squeezes water and silt up through the ballast onto the tops of the sleepers. This pumping action is what railway engineering departments try to avoid at all costs!
Good drainage keeps water flowing away from the rail base so the track does not sink into the mud. These bad spots are where small sections of track begin sinking. Every line has them and they are easy to reproduce with paint and a brush. Once you have got your track in place and ballasted, dab on a small irregular circle of light dust- or mud-coloured paint, covering everything including ballast,
ties and the sides of one rail for about 1/4" along the line (for HO). This will simulate caked mud on the track. At the edges of the affected area, blend the mud into the rest of the ballast by dry brushing a lesser amount of paint.
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Tree Lines
From Greg Aldridge (Victoria)
Take a look at any aerial photo of farmlands and you will see tree lines that separate the parcels. Like fences, they help delineate land ownership, but in some cases they also provide wind breaks. On your layout, they add interest and make fields seem larger. They can also be used to disguise the bottom of your backdrops. Modeling them is easy. Decide where you want to show a change in land ownership. Add two different kinds of ground cover or crops to your scenery base, one on each side of where you want your tree line. Leave about an inch of bare soil between the areas. Add some trees along the line of bare earth. Add some weeds and undergrowth along their base and you are done.
The kind of trees and bushes you choose is up to you, but older tree lines will usually have taller trees and thicker undergrowth. For variety, add a dirt road at the base of the trees and perhaps some farm equipment resting between uses.
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New Life for Old Stations and Railway Buildings
From Trevor Gibbs (Melbourne)
The old saying goes, "That train does not stop here anymore." But in real life, if the town grew up around the station, then it is in a prime commercial or tourism area. Across the continent many old stations have become businesses, restaurants, municipal buildings or museums. The trains no longer stop, but plenty of shoppers and visitors do!
Converted stations or station buildings are easy to model. For the most basic conversion, add new signs and remove the railroad station
signs. Some require a fence be placed between the tracks (if they are still there) and structure, usually for the length of the old platform or property line. Many styles of fencing are available in most scales, so choose one that matches your prototype.
Other additions may include air conditioning units in the windows or on the roof, picnic tables, benches and some landscaping in the former platform areas. Again, these details are available in most scales from a variety of manufacturers. I noticed in the UK back in 2006, several conversions of stations and signal boxes to offices and restaurants in particular the Signal box at Totnes becoming a restaurant and the shopping precinct at Swindon works so there are a few you can pattern your modern era railway on.
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