gmpullmanI'll bet you are going to need lots of retaining walls, too. When you say the "off-the-shelf" piers and abutments aren't big enough, how big are we talking here?
The main issue is height. We need one stone pier and two abutments about 9" tall. The pier shape is pretty standard but the abutments are anything but. (That's a lot of 'buts').
Thank you for bringing up the option of casting our own walls using existing patterns.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
I've been using some stuff that looks similar to the JTT stuff. It's called Simi Creative Products (SCP) that runs 2 sheets for around $4. It's what I've done a lot of the stone buildings on the Cascade Branch, since a quarry was the original reason for building the branch.
It says 1:48 scale on the label, but works for me in HO. I hasve some 00386 Random Coarse Stone in front of me right now. It would need to be applied to something else, although is fairly stiff. The building in the right background is covered with it in this pic, although the building corner needs redone.
oo389 is Fieldstone and 00385 is Brick. I used a lot of this stuff, too, but can't recall the number right now.
In this pic of the Merry Widow Mine, you can see where I used some of this Fieldstone sheeting to build a retaining wall.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
At the Timonium show, Carolina Craftsman Kits was selling 8.5 x 11 sheets of stone and brick. They were inexpensive and I bought a couple sheets, though I can't remember what I paid.
Their website doesn't show any, but they have a contact page and you can shoot them an email.
https://carolinacraftsmankits.com/products
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Hello All,
Short of casting your own I would suggest the Chooch products.
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
I made silicone latex molds of various sizes of cut stone and random stone, interlocking retaining walls.
I'll bet you are going to need lots of retaining walls, too. When you say the "off-the-shelf" piers and abutments aren't big enough, how big are we talking here?
My suggestion would be to make several silicone molds of the various retaining walls. Then cast a bunch of them using dental plaster or Hydrocal. You can then carefully miter the corners and cement them to a wood core* then fill any gaps at the joints with more plaster and carve and sand the corners smooth.
*Liquid Nails type cement would be good here.
Plus you will have as many retaining walls as you'll need. Makes a good team project.
I used patterns very similar to ones on this page:
https://www.choochenterprises.com/HOwalls.html
Just a suggestion, of course—
Good Luck, Ed
Thanks for all the suggestions guys!
Hi Dave.
I made mine out of pink foam while watching hockey. I think I used tile grout as mortar. It is the one on the right.
I used an "I" beam to make the blocks.
They don't come much cheaper!
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
In addition to their cast resin cut stone walls (which would have the structural strength to hold up a bridge), Chooch is making these thin flexible rubbery sheets of cut stone that might work for this application. Some of the European outfits mentioned above offer not just cast plastic sheet, but textured cardstock sheet as well. I seem to recall MicroMark might offer something along those lines, too.
Years ago I was kitbashing the Monroe Models cast plaster stone arch bridge into a double arch bridge and needed cut stone for the new filler between the two Monroe Models castings. It needed to be thick like the plaster castings yet easy to cut to a precise shape. I found a thick foam cut stone product from Noch (58200 Steinmauer/stone wall) that might itself have the structural strength to hold up a bridge and track. It is certainly easy to work with using a sharp knife. But Walthers either no longer carries it or it is sold out (it is a sheet about 2 feet long). Perhaps other sources do have it.
The results if you are interested are on the Monroe Models website:
http://www.monroemodels.us/customers.htm
If you wanted to go retro you could try making your own cut stone out of balsa wood and using a wood burning tool, using techniques written about years ago by E. L. Moore. You use the burning tool to "melt" the balsa and close the grain, with the sharp edge of the wood burning tool part to create the gaps between stones. White glue seals up remaining balsa grain.
The EL Moore articles in MR and RMC go into greater depth, but you can see what I did with the technique here in the Frugal Modeler column:
http://www.mwr-nmra.org/mwr2016/mwr-images/waybillfiles/waybill20123fall.pdf
Dave Nelson
Dave, both Faller and Kibri offer embossed sheets representing various types of cut stone.
I don't think that they have enough stiffness to act as bridge supports on their own, but you could laminate them onto piers made of .060" sheet styrene. For your club, best to buy a 4'x8' sheet of the stuff - I've gone through 5 or 6 sheets just for my own layout.
You could also use the sheet styrene to make moulds, then cast the piers and abutments in plaster. I like Durabond 90 for that, but hydrocal will work, too. Of course, you'd still have to scribe the stone pattern into the castings, and if you wanted rough faces on the stones, that's another job altogether.
There's a how-to on casting your own piers and abutments HERE.
Wayne
I just did a quick search around Dave. JTT has embossed sheets, the ad I saw was through Micro Mark, and Sceneic Express has some also.
I didn't dig deep, just a glance.
I've seen some beautiful work by carving styrofoam, but that would be time consuming.
Do all the piers have to be stone? Aged concrete could be an alternative for some.
Mike.
My You Tube
Hi gang!
I have been trying to find some HO scale cut stone patterned sheets for making bridge piers and abutments. I haven't had much success. I have searched Walthers and Plastruct but I can't find anything that suits our needs.
We have looked at manufactured bridge piers and abutments but they don't even come close to the sizes that we need. What I am looking for is embossed cut stone sheets from which we can make our own piers and abutments. Does anyone make something like this?
Thanks,