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Tips on Making Homemade Scenery N Gauge

The trains get all the glory, but the real star of an N Gauge layout is the scenery. Nothing completes a model train layout like perfectly rendered scenery -- but getting everything right can be the work of a lifetime. Fortunately, even a simple layout can give years of pleasure if embellished with homemade scenery.
  1. Concept and Theme

    • The most important work of building your train layout happens before you even start building. Take time to develop the overall concept and theme of your layout. Let your train be your inspiration for the landscape you will create. A logging train might be most at home in a forested mountainscape with small logging villages, while a passenger train might pass through small towns and farmland. Take into account your train̵7;s time period and country of origin, and use that to inspire your concept. You may wish to choose a single season for the layout, or to show different seasons in different areas.

    Layout

    • Conceptualize how your viewers will interact with the layout: do you want them to take in the entire track all at once, or to view the layout as a series of discrete scenes? Your terrain will be your main way to control the viewer̵7;s experience, and should be planned accordingly.

      One of the joys of a detailed train layout is its possibilities for storytelling -- for example, the train could be passing through a town during a high school football game, or during a Fourth of July parade. Think of ways to tell miniature stories with the scenery; this could be as complex as workers clearing a mountain avalanche from the tracks, or as simple as a boy looking for a lost dog by the side of the tracks.

    Polystyrene and Spackle

    • One of the cheapest and most versatile materials for building homemade railroad scenery is extruded polystyrene. Extruded polystyrene is sold in large sheets as insulation, and is commonly known as pinkboard. Pinkboard is inexpensive and easy to work with, making it the ideal material for building the main terrain features of your layout, such as mountains, hills, cliffsides and railroad tunnels. Hobby shops sell inexpensive hot-wire cutting tools especially for pinkboard, and it can be glued using regular white glue.

      Use the pinkboard to build up the main shapes of your terrain, then coat the pinkboard with spackle to give it a rough, natural texture. Spackle can give a variety of effects depending on whether it is applied smoothly or roughly. A coat of rough, uneven spackle makes an excellent rock face.

    Go Natural

    • There̵7;s no need to purchase commercial scatters to cover the ground of your layout. Oftentimes the best way to replicate nature is by going natural. Natural sand, collected from a beach or creek and washed, makes an excellent ground cover. If you̵7;re looking for more color or texture for your ground, raid your tea cupboard -- herbal teas and blends can be glued down to create an amazing variety of natural-looking textures. Moss and lichen make excellent shrubs and bushes, and you can make beautiful trees with small twigs and natural sponges dyed green.

    Highlighting and Shading

    • Whether you use pre-made scenery or make your own, everything N gauge looks better if it̵7;s shaded or highlighted.

      Shading with a colored wash is especially effective on store-bought scenery, which often pops out of the rest of the landscape because its colors are too bright or too flat. Simply water down some black or brown paint into a thin wash, and apply to the scenery. The wash will settle into the crevices and surface textures, and give a more natural appearance.

      Highlighting is most easily achieved with drybrushing. To drybrush, mix up a paint color slightly lighter than the object you̵7;re highlighting. Load a large brush with the color, then wipe the brush on a cloth to remove almost all the paint. Lightly flick the brush over the surface of the scenery or model. The lighter-colored paint will gradually accumulate on the surface, emphasizing the texture and shape of the scenery and giving a more realistic and weathered look.


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