Landscaping with common items from the kitchen and garage

These are dioramas, not model railroads, but they show an inventive approach to creating scenery without spending a fortune at the hobby store.

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Flickr set

The world's best ground foam

They're not as big or well known as Woodland Scenics or the European brands, but AMSI has been making the world's best ground foam for many years. If you're making trees, there's nothing better than this super-fine foam that is available in many colors and blends. Forgive their amateurish Web site.

A treasure trove of vintage ads

This site recently went up, and it's big. Enjoy.

Bergensbanen - Breathtaking 7-hour cab-view HD video of the NSB from Bergen to Oslo

Anyone interested in an amazing Norwegian prototype for modeling, or just enjoyment? Click here.

Do note that this is a huge download, with some technical restrictions. A BitTorrent client is required.

Fantastic resource for printing out custom wood, masonry, and other tileable textures

Spiral Graphics is offering two free programs that generate seamless tileable textures. If you model with card or paper, or want to print your own texture sheets to cover other materials, you must have these.

The first program is the Genetica Viewer, which has a built-in library of textures, including many of interest for structures, floors, roads, etc. Though the free viewer version of Genetica does not allow you to create new textures from scratch (a rather complicated process involving defining and connecting algorithmic units together), you can alter quite a few parameters of the inbuilt textures including the density, hue, contrast, and the random seed which varies the patterns. Your customized texture can then be output to a .jpg or .bmp file, in many different pixel resolutions, for use in drawing, word processing, or illustration software. You'll want to make sure that the file's pixel resolution, once scaled, yields around 300 dots per inch. For example, if the printed texture will have tiles that are each around two inches square, your resolution should not be less than 512X512 pixels. Finally, note that many more free textures can be downloaded one by one from their user forums. If you use BitTorrent, many of these additional textures have been put together in this torrent file.

The second program is their Wood Workshop, which works similarly to the Genetica Viewer but which focuses exclusively on wood textures, with many more customizable parameters. Clapboard and board-and-batten are only the beginning.

The primary users of these programs are those designing 3D objects for computers games or art, but the possibilities for card modeling and texture sheets are truly extraordinary.

Better sound for model railroads

I like sound a lot. Sound is a big part of the railfanning experience, and it can also be an important part of model railroading, but there are problems.

Not that I’m opinionated or anything, but the sound on DCC decoders is just awful. David K. Smith wrote an eloquent piece on this a couple of years back, and I’m going to second and third his motion. There are basically two problems with onboard loco sound: the earbud-sized speakers on the boards aren’t capable of reproducing sound with any kind of fidelity, and even if they could (or even if you piped the sound output of a decoder through a separate amp and speakers), the 8-bit sound digitization on the board is akin to the sound in a plastic child’s toy.

I think it’s easy to get hung up on the idea that a loco’s sound must originate from exactly the same place as the loco, and I’d like to refute this notion. As modelers, we don’t duplicate reality exactly, but rather we design and build heightened and augmented versions of it, with certain things emphasized and other things de-emphasized. Next time you watch a movie, note how the synced sound consists mainly of dialogue and Foley (footsteps, explosions, etc), with much of the sonic environment being “wild” or unsynchronized.

So, what to do if you’re interested in a realistic, high quality, immersive sonic atmosphere for your pike? You can make (if you’re handy with digital audio software and have access to a sound library) or buy a basic environmental sound mix containing country, city, and industrial noises, have these on audio CDs or other playback hardware, and reproduce them through a decent amp, with decent speakers behind or below your layout.

But what about the loco sounds? Time to think outside the box:

1. If your layout (or one part of a large layout) is a yard or industrial switching area, augment your environmental sound mix with occasional and random slow-speed loco movements, brake, coupler, bell, and horn sounds, so that the loco you’re controlling becomes just part of a larger sphere of activity. This can be amazingly effective, even though there is no loco “sync sound.”
2. If you must have specific sync sound for the loco you’re operating, you could compile a collection of around a dozen key loco sound sequences (station halt, comin’ ‘round the bend, distant and close horn blows, etc) as audio files on a computer. Then use software to trigger these sounds; do this concurrently while you operate the loco. Combine the computer’s sound output with the basic environmental mix, and route this to two good speakers in a stereo pair under the layout, or above it. Again, the overall psychological effect of good, balanced, immersive sound far outweighs being able to have the sound come from a precise location of the layout.
3. Don’t use loco sounds, make do with the natural clickety-clack on your model rails.

Remember that, like everything visual on your layout, sound also needs to be to scale. This means using very low volume levels: imagine that as you peer down at your layout, how loud would the sounds be if this was the real world and you were floating in the sky looking down?

Finally, note that our ears are much less sensitive to bass and treble at lower volume levels. Your amp (or CD player) may have a “loudness” function, which compensates for this by boosting bass and treble. This keeps the sound fuller without making it louder. Use it if you have it.

Cheap alternative to Silflor

I just love learning about cheap and creative approaches to scenery. I recently heard about craft store pot toppers as a much-cheaper-than-Silflor material for vegetation. Neat!

LED "rosettes" to light structures

I wrote earlier about using yellow LEDs to light structures internally. Having just started construction on a new module, I've decided to apply this technique, and have sorted out some better specifications than the ones I previously posted.

The advantage of LEDs is that they are dim enough that, with proper positioning, they won't make the structure walls "glow" in the dark, even if you don't paint the insides of the structures black (a chore I despise, and one which presents many opportunities for accidentally painting over places that need to be glued). Their dimness also means you pretty much need one LED per window, sometimes two for a big window.

So, because even a simple structure usually requires several LEDs, I've been constructing circuits of 6 LEDs. I bend the leads of 6 LEDs, solder them positive-to-negative in series, then solder a 220-ohm resistor to the positive end (a value that will give the right current to the LEDs using most transformer accessory power), and two wires to the opposite ends, making a kind of circle I call a "rosette." This rosette/array of LEDs can then be arranged inside the structure, so the LEDs are a millimeter or two behind each window, pointing right at it ... of course it's a good idea to diffuse the light by backing the window with vellum, frosted mylar, paper, etc.

Each of these circuits will consume 20-25ma, depending on transformer voltage. I use a single full-wave bridge rectifier to feed the circuits (since the LEDs only conduct in one direction). As you can surmise, you can power a large number of LEDs using only a fraction of the power from one transformer.

Hi-Res Color Pictures of American Cities, Mid-20th Century

These are really something, should be very inspiring for those of you modeling transition-era American cities.

Ridiculously simple and good-looking roads, lots, and pavement

For roads, lots, and pavement, sandpaper is your friend. You can easily trim it to any size and shape you want, from narrow road to large lot. You can cut it to fit between the rails for street running or grade crossings.

Start by selecting a grade of sandpaper suitable to what you're modeling. Fine is good for sidewalks and parking lots, while coarse is better for streets and roads. The extra thickness and height of the coarse paper also looks good at grade crossings.

If you're simulating a dirt road, the sandpaper is probably already the proper color. Otherwise, you'll want to paint the sandpaper with two coats of cheap craft store acrylic paint. For pavement or asphalt try shades of gray to dark gray. For concrete, use your eyes when selecting the paint. I use a shade called Bamboo.

After your painted sandpaper has been installed (cut and glued down), get creative with weathering. A technique I like is drydabbing. Like drybrushing, your paint brush has been wiped almost totally dry, with just a tiny amount of paint left, but instead of stroking use quick stabs and dabs. Drydab with colors just a shade or two removed from your pavement/concrete color.

I also like to use Bragdon weathering powders to simulate the soft streaks left on roads by tires and spills.

Finally, use a fine-tipped permanent marker to add cracks and tar patches.

Enough already with the Flickr pools

I promise this is the last one, but I had to include it because it may be the best of the bunch:

http://flickr.com/groups/425158@N25/pool/

One more cool pool for us on Flickr

This was added since my last post about Flickr, and I couldn't have put together a more appropriate photo pool for model railroaders if I designed it myself. 'Nuff said, just take a look and let the scenery ideas flow:

http://flickr.com/groups/559073@N25/pool/

Use Flickr for model railroad inspiration

Here's one of those seemingly basic ideas that can turn out to be invaluable. Flickr, the photo indexing and sharing Web site, has interest groups called "Pools" (where many users' photos can be combined and displayed together) which can be a terrific source for model railroad scenery ideas. Here's a few you can check out:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/16506306@N00/pool/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/indecay/pool/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/id_trees/pool/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/81809473@N00/pool/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/railroadart/pool/

A quick n' "dirt"-y plowed field

This works well in HO or N scale ...

Start with a piece of scrap corduroy fabric, cut to the desired size of your field. It should be an earth color, tan or brown (or else gold or green). Study a photo of the type of field you're trying to recreate; often the fabric will look right as is ... otherwise:

Paint some glue into the "crevices" of the corduroy and sprinkle on some dirt or earth ground cover; let dry and shake off the excess.

Paint glue on the remaining "tall" parts, and sprinkle on green or yellow fine ground foam. Let dry and shake off the excess. Glue the piece down and that's it!

Keep your eyes open for miscellaneous small things that can be used as scenery

I'm doing a design at the moment that incorporates a rather unusual industry: a landscape supply company, the kind with lots of fountains and statuary piled around outside. I was scratching my head trying to think what I would use for all this outside merchandise, and got the answer recently when browsing a craft store: glass or ceramic beads. I will just select the appropriate sizes and shapes, and paint and weather them.

The experience reminded me that all kinds of random bits can be pressed into service on a layout. Look around you, see any ideas?

My favorite dirt

When creating ground cover, a lot of people like to use real sand, baseball diamond sand, vermiculite, or other natural sources.

My preference is to use the artificially colored sand that is sold at craft stores, and typically used for sand art, sand in bottles, candles, etc. The bright primary colors won't do you much good, but if you stock up on white, gray, a couple of shades of brown, and maybe a dark red, you can blend 2 or 3 together to get some quite nice shades for ground cover.

It looks even better if you mix in some fine green ground foam, and maybe a little fine ballast or talus to simulate the occasional rock.

Applying the first layer of ground cover: problems with pock marks

Your terrain is in place, you have your diluted glue, matte medium, or scenic cement (hereafter referred to as “bonding agent”) and you’re ready to apply your first layer of dirt, sand, or ground foam. You sprinkle on some ground cover, then use an eyedropper or spritzer to soak with the bonding agent. You come back a little later, after it’s started to dry, and lo and behold, your soil or grass looks like the surface of the moon.

When the ground cover is dry, it is very sensitive to movement, and the drops from the spritzer or eyedropper create pock marks. Making the bonding agent “wetter” using a drop of dish detergent or a little rubbing alcohol helps to even the flow, but doesn’t do much for the pock marks.

The classic “solution” for this is to forego the bonding agent for the first layer, and instead to paint the terrain first with a mixture of earth-colored latex or acrylic paint and undiluted glue or matte medium, then sprinkle the ground cover over this while it’s still wet. The problem is, even after this dries, not all of the ground cover will have been “gripped” by the paint/glue mixture, leaving you with loose “topsoil” that still needs to be soaked with bonding agent, which can still leave pock marks.

The way I’ve coped with this so far: with or without the underlayer of paint/glue, after the ground cover has been soaked and has been drying for about half an hour (still very wet), I search out every pock mark and carefully “fill in” by sprinkling very small amounts of additional ground cover. This works, but it’s really tedious and I’d like to find a better way. Feel free to comment …