TheRailwire
General Discussion => N and Z Scales => Topic started by: tmlbk on July 14, 2006, 01:58:22 PM
-
While all of us would like to have our layouts look like those in magazines, I'm beginning to realize there is no way I could justify spending the dollars it would require to do so. :'( I guess I'm stuck with puff ball trees and real dirt sprinkled on white glue. Maybe I should have never built a room size layout?
How much money do guys like Joe Fugate spend on scenery? It's got to be a lot. :o How do they justify it to their spouses/kids? ??? I feel pretty guilty spending nealy $10 on a bottle of ground foam or ballast.
-
I hear you. This is my latest order with Scenery Express:
1 FINE NATURAL SOIL & DIRT- Quart
Item: SS0011 Price: $11.98
$11.98
1 TALL 4MM LATE SUMMER PRAIRIE TUFTS
Item: MN72723 Price: $19.99
$19.99
1 SHORT 2MM SPRING PRAIRIE TUFTS
Item: MN71721 Price: $19.99
$19.99
The key is to think small - I guess. :D Oh, and work slow to spread the cost out.
-
The key on large layouts is to catch the flavor .. and only detail small scenes ..
puff ball is good .. especially for the large area ..
(https://www.therailwire.net/album/albums/batch/100_1984a.jpg)
This scene is made from puff balls, I got them out of an old couch I was trashing .. it was in the stuffing .. a couple of cans of black paint on the puff balls, covered with colored saw dust, then a couple of shades of woodland scenics, and it does a credible job ..
-
That scene looks great John . With that red ballast it would look right at home under DM&IR jenny's .
-
Scenery more than any other aspect of model railroading is an area where time and money are tradeoffs. Make trees out of old stranded wire or twigs and weeds found along the road plus "puffballs" and ground foam, they'll be a lot cheaper than "store-bought" ones, but you'll spend a lot more time making them. I could find enough lichen growing naturally around here in the wintertime to do a large layout, but I'd have to pick it, clean it, dye it and preserve it myself.
Plaster of Paris, powdered cement coloring, fiberglass screen, and industrial grade paper towels are cheap enough. You can't find extruded foam thicker than 1/2 inch in the Florida Panhandle. Compared to the price of structures, "landscaping" itself is cheap! :D
-
I wouldn't say time and money are direct trade offs if you're looking for quality.
I don't think 100 ready-made trees by Woodland Scenics will look as good as one done in the way Bob Hundman suggests... (ie, build a model of a tree like it's a piece of rolling stock, part by part)
Scenery is just one of those things, like all of the hobby, where you have to determine your depth of participation based on your skill & available cash levels.
-
For me the cost is in distraction. Scenary is not my strong suit.
-
My background scenery is literally hundreds of Heki "bottle brush" pine trees. The intent is to be uninteresting so as to direct the viewer back to the foreground, where the details (and the better trees) are located.
-
With me . it's easy . My scenery is plastic boxes . Kind of like a hobby shop . Whenever I go to a hobby shop , which is almost never , I look at their display cases . If well stocked and stacked , my thoughts are , " Well scenic ed " . No track , no trees , no bench work , none of that cost and time consuming stuff . I have enough of stuff for a very large club , train , and vehicle wise and 2 big turntables . The layout is in my head , and the head is defective . I am not a collector , in so much as I have a theme , and if there was a layout all this would fit the pre-conceived layout in my defective head .
-
1. Think used. I've bought tons of bags of half used ground foam, ballast, tallus etc. for pennies on the dollar.
2.For basics like hard shell material, plaster cloth, paint, styrofoam, and glue STAY AWAY FROM THE LHS!! Allot of products , or a suitable alternative, sold at the LHS can be bought at major retailer like WAL MART :D OR HOME-BOY DEPOT for allot less.
-
My scenery is planned to be as Proto 1:160 as possible, and with a 22'x36' layout it seems like a lot....but spread over 10+ years its not that bad.
-
I'm using goldenrod by the garbage-bag full, and it's free.
Ground foam, can't remember the last time I bought any.
Woodland Scenic tree trunks, those actually cost something. But I only use those on the foreground model trees. Bags of foliage are pretty cheap, I stretch the heck out of them.
Cork for rocks, and plaster, negligible.
I really like Iain McMillan's Horseshoe Curve layout - best example of massive amounts of trees for next to nothing with all those cotton balls painted and turfed. Mine are cheap, but incredibly labor intensive.
You can spend a lot of money on pre-made trees, that's for sure, but I think that's a terrible mistake except for foreground models.
(http://gustafson.home.westpa.net/Eagle%20Tree.jpg)
I want to add a lot more detail, but again, a heck of a lot more labor intensive than expensive.
-
I look at scenery like the rest of the "hobby". Cost is proportional to size of the layout, and how "detailed" you want to get.
It's just like locos and rolling stock! How many locos and cars do "we" have, and how much did they "cost".
Maybe that's the problem for a lot of us. Buying $75 worth of scenery "stuff" is the price of a loco ??? Maybe we (I) have accumulated to many locos and cars ;D
Seriously though, however it's done, spread out over time makes it "manageable" to the budget. The family will still be able to eat :o
-
I really like Iain McMillan's Horseshoe Curve layout - best example of massive amounts of trees for next to nothing with all those cotton balls painted and turfed. Mine are cheap, but incredibly labor intensive.
Why thank you!
I had lots of fun building that layout, but its prototypical track plan left me gettting bored running it, so I have moved on from it. It lives only now in photos :-[
The new layout will look great, and operate very well....I promise!
-
Ian,
Some of these MEC boxcars can surely find a way to the new layout.
http://www.blwnscale.com/BLW-Millennium%20Series.htm
...and stop calling me Shirley!
-
My ballast was free. Two hundred pounds of fine blasting sand makes for perfect, if brown, ballast. And I don't think I will ever run out.
Indeed, it may be too fine :o.
-
Guys,
One way to keep the cost of scenery down is to keep your benchwork narrow - lessening the amount of scenery that needs to be built.
Joe Fugate's layout very successfully demonstrates how narrow benchwork raised relatively close to eye level creates a pretty damn cool
effect.
I'm using the same concept for my n scale logging branch layout.
Cheers,
Michel
-
I'd love to see some pics!
-
I'd love to see some pics!
Ed, there's a little box at the top of this page labeled "Google". Try typing in something like "Joe Fugate layout". Amazingly, the first thing that comes up is this:
http://siskiyou-railfan.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.26
Maybe you should head over to the local tech school and take a basic computer course. :-*
-
I'd love to see some pics!
Ed, there's a little box at the top of this page labeled "Google". Try typing in something like "Joe Fugate layout". Amazingly, the first thing that comes up is this:
http://siskiyou-railfan.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.26
Maybe you should head over to the local tech school and take a basic computer course. :-*
Er, I read Ed's post to mean he wanted to see some photos of Michel's logging layout and not Joe Fugate's. Give Ed a little credit... :P
-
No way. It's always fun to pick on Ed.
-
Wow, that's a beautiful layout! :P
-
Scenery doesn't have to be expensive. A lot of our trees are just weeds. I buy styrene in 4 x 8 sheets for $16 or so. I buy huge bags pf floral moss (lichen)for $6--WS charges that or more for a tiny bag. I use real dirt and real pea stone--the first is free, the second I just picked up from around my well, so it was free too. For crops, I bought a one-foot strip of Astro-Turf at Lowes for about $2.
I've calculated that I have more than 300 square feet of layout table. Except for ballast, I doubt I've spent $100 on ground foam.
-
Never EVER spend money if you don't have to. John's layout is a great example of stretching the scenery dollar and getting great results. I try to do the same thing. Here's an example:
(http://www.wmrywesternlines.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/Layout_pictures_110.jpg)
The water could be Woodlands Scenics water stuff, probably about $9 for a thimble full... I use clear gloss acrylic medium, about $3 a quart.
The rocks could be molded from relatively expensive plaster cast in expensive rubber molds... I use rocks.
The trees are a combination of puff balls and my famous Dollar Dollar Tree Trees, not scenic express. Mine won't win any prizes, but they set the scene to my tastes just fine.
The bridge pier could be an expensive resin or plaster casting, but it's scratch built from about 30 cents worth of styrene. The bridge is comprised of two Atlas girder plates salvaged from a previous layout.
The line poles are the cheap Atlas ones, I just took the time to dab a little paint on the insulators...
The sand is from a craft store, where you get about 3 times as much for half the price of WS.
And here's a secret for you... Woodland Scenic "cement" is re-packaged white glue!!
If you're a little fearless and halfway creative, you can build great scenery without tapping out your credit cards.
Lee
-
Looks great Lee. I'm getting ready for "my water" and I'll have to try that out.
-
Go to the craft aisle at Walmart, or to the paint department at Michaels or Ben Franklin. It takes a few coats, but you can stipple it as it skins over and get a really nice ripple effect. Put up some pics when you're done.
Lee
-
Lee...how much was that backdrop... :D
-
I paid $97,200 for the door, but I got a free house with it...
That's the other wonder of digital cameras. I set the camera in the riverbed and shot toward the outer edge of the layout. You're just lucky I wasn't standing there... all you'd see is my big gut and whatever sweaty t-shirt I was wearing at the time.
Lee
-
Lee , that shot looks outstanding . I would add a kid or two , or a dear taking a sip , by not both . Just something for the viewer to find . Stick a sitting kids butt in a small o ring . Disk grind the bottom , kid and o ring so its 1/2 the cross section of the o ring . Then place it in the stream . It will look like a kid in a o ring , I mean inner tube , floating down the river . Could do it to more than one kid , Kids rarely wouldn't have company doing something like that . Just as easy would be a raft using the same method ( build it fat , then grind it flat ).
-
Lee needs white water around those rocks!
-
Lee needs white water around those rocks!
Not if its a slow lazy stream , during a prolonged dry spell in August , long after any snow melt .
-
I should add that most of my hardshell scenery is actually softshell--i.e, joint compound. I bought a five-gallon tub of it when I started in 2002. I probably have 3 gallons left. I think it cost less than $20. I use a tape web to make hills--lots of cheap 1-inch masking tape. Then I visit the "leftovers and returns" pile at Home Depot--I got a gallon of tan latex paint for $2.
-
One way to keep the cost of scenery down is to keep your benchwork narrow - lessening the amount of scenery that needs to be built.
This is the approach I took when I went to a double deck layout. I narrowed the majority of my benchwork down to 12". In theory I got twice the mainline run with the same scenic footprint.
All my scenery is Styrofoam WITHOUT plaster cloth over it, seems like just an added expense. Works great and you can get some great contours using a knife and a sanding block. Shape the styrofoam, paint it with latex and sprinkle some foam into the paint. Go over it after and touch up any spots that need work with spray glue and more foam. I find that ground foam goes a long way. If your surface is prepped correctly, a good base color is put down then minimal foam is required as I think the soil should show through. Rock molds are casting plaster applied wet directly to the foam.
I also handmake all my trees which saves significantly on scenery cost. No sense getting carried away with scenery under a forest, just detail in about an inch.
-
The kid in the innertube is a great idea. I used to do that myself quite a bit. There would be two kids, though, and a third tube with a cooler in it tethered to one of them.... Only this wouldn't be the best place... that part of the river is right next to the paper mill spillway... You wouldn't have to file off the bottom of the kid... it would dissolve on it's own!
Now all this talk about hardshell and soft shell is making me hungry... Now where's my Old Bay? :D
Lee
-
I've been using foam for years, and I cover it with a light coat of Sculptamold.
I fell in love with that stuff. I've found out that I can "color" it with various "earth tone" washes, and then use a lot less "ground foam", etc because the "base" can look so real.
Maybe I really like this stuff cuz it reminds me of oat meal..........mmmmm :o
-
I'm using the same method. Stack up some foam, stuff the cracks with newspaper, and "frost" it with Sculptamold. I blend in cheap craft acrylics to dye it to a light earth tone, then apply several washes of darker browns, blacks and greens to finish it, then apply a coat of ground foam while the paint's still wet.
For track bed, I use a base of 1/4" luaun plywood with a 3/4 layer of foam on top, formed in the traditional "cookie cutter" fashion. I then can set my grades, stack up the surrounding terrain, and blend it all together. I used to get scraps of luaun from a local flooring dealer.
Lee
-
to echo some of the sentiments, I'm glad that I only have a small room to work with now. This gladness is in direct conflict with my desire for a basement filling layout with scale miles upon scale miles of mainline track.
But as I have gone crazy with automobile projects in the past 7 years or so, I've come to realize that there can be too much of a good thing (I had 5 project cars at one point). Now when I think about this stuff I force myself to consider the maintenance aspect - these hobbies exist for my pleasure (as opposed to me existing to serve/please my hobbies).
As Clint said once - "a man's got to know his limitations" ;)
-
Scarey Lee :o I've used laun for years as "subroadbed" over foam. I changed to Vinylbed years ago too, over the laun.
I like Vinylbed's subroadbed, then roadbed for the mains. I super elevate curves by building up Durams Water Putty over the subroadbed, then laying down the roadbed. At track time, just lay the track ;D
-
(http://images1.snapfish.com/347677944%7Ffp64%3Dot%3E2329%3D%3C7%3C%3D579%3DXROQDF%3E232374%3A3459%3A3ot1lsi)
No, the luaun goes on the bottom of the sandwitch. Having the wood gives you something to screw to risers, and to mount switch machines under the table. The foam is the top layer, and I lay the track and cork on that with liquid nails adhesive screeded out to a thin film.
Lee
-
Plaster cloth? Nah use used drier sheets and diluted white glue bought by the gallon or soupy plaster mix that you dump the sheets in before applying to the layout.
You can also buy the drier sheet (unscented) by the yard in most fabric shops.
-
Just came back from vacation and was surprised to find so many replies. Good stuff!
What about all those little things that make the best layouts the best layouts? You know, the junk on the side of the ROW, the fences, the realistic vehicles, water features, etc. That stuff is crazy expensive!
-
Just came back from vacation and was surprised to find so many replies. Good stuff!
What about all those little things that make the best layouts the best layouts? You know, the junk on the side of the ROW, the fences, the realistic vehicles, water features, etc. That stuff is crazy expensive!
Yes, it is. But this is the stuff that can be acquired over years and years. Start with a few select scenes and build them up over time.
-
What about all those little things that make the best layouts the best layouts? You know, the junk on the side of the ROW, the fences, the realistic vehicles, water features, etc. That stuff is crazy expensive!
[/color]
It look at things as either dissposable or things to keep for a lift time. These are items you list are things you can pull off and save for the "next layout" ,so I don't worry about cost so much. But again, walk the train shows and swaps and look for great deals. You'll find them. I've picked up all kinds of CMW vehicals ,for example, used for allot less than new LHS price.
The basic layout foundation of foam, plaster, paint etc. keep the cost low and its no big hit in the wallet to dispose of, if and when you decide to scarp the layout and move on.
-
Those details don't have to be expensive, either... Most of what you see in these views is crap that's accumulated in the junk box over the years. Old gears, busted sticks, unused detail parts from other kits, and things found around the house or other unexpected places...
(http://www.wmrywesternlines.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/Latest_and_Greatest_012.jpg)
(http://www.wmrywesternlines.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/mURI_temp_06e021eb.jpg)
(http://images.snapfish.com/34645974%3B%7Ffp64%3Dot%3E2329%3D%3C7%3C%3D579%3DXROQDF%3E23237539%3A4%3B77ot1lsi)
(http://images.snapfish.com/34645974%3B%7Ffp3%3B%3Dot%3E2323%3D534%3D%3C%3A7%3D3232534%3B%3B6%3B24nu0mrj)
(http://www.wmrywesternlines.net/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/mURI_temp_75406d19.jpg)
Again, a little imagination and a well-stocked junk box...
Lee
-
Here's my attempt at +/- 2,500 cheap trees. The cheap camera and flash sure show the gray polyfiber.
They were created using Walmart pillow stuffing, Reit Dye (triple strength brown/black mix), a lot of very cheap hair spray, and various combinations of Woodland Scenics and Scenic Express turfs. They cost about $.03 each. Each tree was completely covered with foam to avoid filling in the "cracks" between the trees.
(http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/500/134-3417_IMG.JPG)
(http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/500/134-3422_IMG.JPG)
(http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/500/134-3431_IMG.JPG)
(http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/500/134-3423_IMG.JPG)
-
Wal-Mart pillow stuffing! I'm going to have to remember that.
Although I counted my stash of Heki bottle brush trees, and, well... :-X
-
Stop by my website for some scenery updates. Check out the trees article under "what's new" in particular.
Lee
-
I did, they look great. I'm not sure that stuff grows in NW Georgia though...
How long doe it take to make one tree?
-
Over the course of three evenings, I made 100 trees. All total, about 4 hours.
Lee
-
I did, they look great. I'm not sure that stuff grows in NW Georgia though...
It does. At least it will intown ATL (which means it will grow anywhere). Seems to grow best when not in direct sun all day.
Steve
-
Where can I purchase Sedum in Atlanta?
-
I'd start with a plant shop. Big home centers might have them when their stock of garden stuff shows up in a few weeks.
Lee