A buddy and I are working on constructing a large wood trestle for our club's layout. I was thinking it would be neat to have a small, scale sized brass plaque made displaying the year (in this case 1847) it was constructed and by what engineering firm. The mock up by a local engraving company looks awesome, but at .5x.5 it might be a bit too big.
My thought is to build an appropriate sized stone cairn on which to mount the plaque. The dimensions would need to be about 1"x1"x2", or something close to that.
I have considered using stacked stone castings to create what we need or to make the column out of plastic and then cover it with some of the scale sized flexible plastic sheets of a stone (adhesive backed) that would give me the look and size I am after.
Any other way some of you might consider going about this or have any thoughts about what solutions I have come up with?
Also, any of you have recommendations for any sheets of stone that you feel would look great for this? Should I maybe consider N scale stone in order to not have it seem too out of place? As for the plaque itself, I think I could work out a way to bring the casting material, or plastic stone sheeting, up and over the edges of it a bit making it look like it is imbedded in place as well as reducing the over all appearance of it. The end result would be more like 3/8x3/8" actually showing - but still allowing the lettering to be fully visible.
Thanks,Dan
This is just me, but I prefer to use local materials if they are handy and the right scale. I have used local beach sand for ballast on at least three layouts now, and have used inland sand, the kind you see in pine forests in so many places.
Assuming you would like the cairn to be realistic in appearance in scale, roadside grit would be your best bet, maybe something from a pet store for bird gizzards if you can't get anything off the ground reasonably easily locally. Then, with a scaled and shaped bit of extruded foam or wood, glue the grit bits to the shape, and then 'grout' the rest of it to look like a hand-built stone cairn. Plaster would be just fine, and you could even tint it with acrylic paints to make it look like cement, which you would often find cementing a stone cairn together.
Otherwise, go to Walthers and look for rock walls and such, and hopefully that will help.