Welcome.
You bake dirt so that anythng alive in it doesn't grow--unless you just like mold. You also want to run it through a magnet because you don't want your engines picking up loose particles.
Mountains can be made from construction foam. There are a lot of threads here that talk about that. There are several varieties of plants that make good trees. Sedium grows around here and makes a good oak. But you can just look around in fields and come up with some good options.
I have made a few structures with popcicle sticks. Posterboard can work well also.
Experiment and get creative. I made some industrial lights by tracing a quarter on an aluminum can and wrapping it around a light bulb. Worked great for the inside of an engine house. A friend with a really large layout made fuel storage tanks out of scraps of PVC pipe.
You are only limited by your imagination.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
hi milkman
i`am working in 3 rail o scale and right now making a mountain by using extruded foam glued down and pinned in place with bamboo skewers after it was dry i used the foam in the can called great stuff you have to dispense this foam very slow as it has a mind of it`s own , if you`ve never used it before you might want to buy a can and practice before you use it on your lay out.when it`s dry you can spread on some type of plaster product or in my case i`am using a modified ground goop.the reason for me doing it this way is my mountain is 43" x 76" and if the need to get inside the tunnel arises i can lift the top off by my self as it should be relatively light,both types of foam are light also the ground goop is light,when done the mountain will have ground foam and homade trees on it.
good luck and have fun with it,as there is no right way or wrong way to do it,each person brings his or her own skills to the project. dutchman
I wanted real authentic East Texas low-grade-iron-ore bearing red dirt for my East Texas layout. (trackplan shown in Top Notch Track Plans book before layout actually built.) I was on a research trip to the Big Thicket and wanted to pick up some red dirt, but didn't want to get a federal rap for stealing a shoveful of dirt from National Forest land. I ran across a house where a guy had a dump truck parked outside, and some little piles of red dirt where he had cleaned out his truck. I asked if I could buy a grocery bag full for a buck. He let me have a bag. I kept it many years before getting aroiund to pulverizing and using it. Some is in the foreground around the heavy-equipment unloading dock at Wayne Implement Co.
I also have "rolled my own" pine trees by the bottle brush method. I have a frame about 2 feet long, a slat on each side of an open slot. I cut cheap cheap cheapest jute twine I can get into 2 inch long pieces and straighten it out. Put one length of soft aluminum wire attached to a nail at each end of the frame, running down the open slot. Daub rubber cement on the wire, then lay my chunks of twine on the slates across the slot, so that the chunks can stick to the cement-covered wire. I put a second wire attached to the nmail at one end of the slot, make a loop with the other wire and put the loop into a hook I have chucked into a variable speed electric drill. I run the drill slowly to spiral up the wire. The chunks of twine twist various dirctions around the turning of the wire, as they are twisted up in it. Cut the wire into tree- length chunks, give the twine a haircut with a pair of scissors to look less uniform and more random, spray the twine part with spray adhesive and shake up in a bag filled with pine tree colored fine ground foam. I used a kind of fine sawdust el cheapo "ground cover" material sold at craft stores whose only model railroad items are train sets, put white glue on the trunk and dipped the trunk in sawdust stuff to suggest bark. I don't claim to "model" bark, only suggest it.
As individual trees, no prize winners. But nice en masse.
(By the way, I am looking through the trains.com forum while taking a break from dismantling this East Texas piney woods layout to build a Galveston island seaport layout. No pine trees, just lots of palm trees and oleander and corona vine. I am looking for a home for a couple hundred pine trees...)
I once used plain clay cat litter as rock rubble cut I have heard it can have problems when it absorbs water, may not be stable.
Is this cheap or hokespun enough for you?
I am a scrounger and pack rat XXL! I'm always on the lookout for anything, and I mean ANYTHING that I can use as scenic or detail materials. Sifted kitty litter for ballast, odd shaped bottles for storage tanks and silos, bags of odd colored gravel for gondola loads and twigs and sticks of all varieties. A trip to the dollar\thrift store is like going on a treasure hunt....never know what might be waiting there.
The only thing I've bought to landscape with is the WS tree armatures....easier than making them with twigs, then I covered them with lichen. Looks pretty good.
Sand\dirt and gravel from the road is a good landscaping material, and it's free!!
Just keep an eye out for anything that might be useful, if it looks like it might make good scenery.....try it!
Check out "Uncle Buck's" in the General Discussion section of the MR forum. He has done one each of the last three weeks, not all home made stuff, but inexpensive ideas. Will be trying some of them shortly.
Got to turn in soon, so I can get up and pull it out, so you can deliver it.
Have fun,
Sifted sand for ballast (choose your color).
Lowbush blueberry branches for tree armatures.
Real rocks (shale, quartz bearing and sandstone chips).
Lots of pink foam and "structolyte" brown coat plaster.
Torn up old sponges.
Modelers throw away nothing that just MIGHT be useful some day.
Karl
The mind is like a parachute. It works better when it's open. www.stremy.net
Great input and advice guys! Thanks! I'm a just graduated graphic designer, and I've always been looking through craft and thrift stores for anything that might be suitable for a project present or future, it's become 2nd nature to me. I always have kept scraps and odds and ends, I'm now doing the same thing for my model railway. I always felt more satisfied with my work when I'd created or used something that I had made from scratch rather than buying something already made, and I guess it's carrying over into my model railwaying too. Anyways, I'll read through all those articles and start experimenting!!
Thanks again!