Creating Railway Model Scenery – 13 Simple Household Products That Work Wonders
I hear this all the time from newbie model railroaders “railway model scenery’s are expensive to create”. Yes, this can be true, if you buy all of your model railway scenery supplies from hobby stores. But Don’t as many scenery model railway products can be found right in your own household. Thats why you should always think twice before throwing anything away. What looks like “junk” just might be a great addition to your model railways scenery.
The following 13 household items are excellent “fillers”. Fillers are used to fill in baron spots in your model railway’s scenery areas.
1. Talcum or Baby Powder is fantastic for creating snow capped mountains or a snow covered farmers’ field.
2. Smaller rocks in various sizes can create the look of large and small boulders. To make the boulders look far away you need to use the “forced perspective” technique. To do this, put the bigger rocks up front and the smaller slightly darker ones farther back, this creates the illusion that the farther back boulders are a long ways off. Also, it’s best NOT to clean the rocks, as this will kill the age look that you will want.
3. Next time you saw wood, collect the sawdust, add and mix in the right fabric dye color and presto you now have dirt and/or grass.
4. Ground up pecan and peanut shells can also work great for creating dirt. You can vary the look of the textures’ dirt with the grinding. The more you grind the shells the finer and smoother the dirt will be.
5. Different colored tea leaves when spread on the ground, gives the illusion of falls fallen tree leaves (this works great)!
6. Smaller pebbles, shrubbery and twigs in your yard can be used for landscaping.
7. Toothpicks are great for building fence posts and rails. Round toothpicks stacked on top of each other will look like firewood.
8. Match sticks (without the match heads) are excellent for creating sign posts.
9. Bamboo skewers when used right can make very realistic telephone poles.
10. Black thread can be turned into telephone lines.
11. Aluminum foil is one of the most commonly used household items by railroad modelers. It can be molded into any shape you want and it looks like metal. Also, it’s great for stopping light from going though areas like walls in a room.
12. Metal combs will create a wood grain effect on soft plastic and wood. Make sure to put a slight wave as this will create a realistic wood grain look.
13. Used house paint is excellent for painting things like fence posts.