Nice!

Before you go any further--do you have access to the hidden tracks?

I'll be watching with interest--my finances are limited, also.

Cardboard can be had....

for very little, if you stop by your local Home Depot or Lowes and ask nicely. Tell them your moving and that will load you with boxes. Plenty of cardboard for modeling. 

Try Gigwalk to do small jobs

The app allows you to do small jobs ($10/job) via an iPhone. There are lots of Bing search engine jobs in my area involving creating panoramas in stores for the search engine. I haven't tried it yet myself but I'm doing something else to raise funds outside the family finances as the wife is not working full-time right now.

You Are Right About the Cost

I'm amazed at the thousands of dollars I've spent getting started in the past 18 months, and about 90% of it was for track and scenery. I have never considered myself a scavenger, but after analyzing my layout expenses, I look a little more carefully at stuff before trashing it. I have used several things that I used to consider as garbage. You just have to be careful about how much of it you accumulate. 

Another source

Hi Jim

I'm also a Jim and have very limited resources.  Here is another source:

A couple of years ago my wife, when she was able to get about, rescued a fairly large sheet of cardboard and a big sheet of foamcore from the dumpster of a picture framing shop.   I also save any box that comes in the house for future use. 

Drinking straws of all sizes can also be used for anything needing a hollow tube - smoke stacks, pipe loads, culverts, or as conduit to run wiring through.  Toothpicks used to hold sandwiches together at Panera scale out to be a 7" diameter, 4' high wood post; and the straws they put in smoothies scale to about a 4' diameter pipe.

And to really go over to the dark side - my outdoor cats are shedding, so I have all this "natural fiber" that should be able to become grass and weeds.  Still thinking this over - I'm wondering if I put it in a bag and microwave it will this sterilize it and kill any critters that may be in it.

But this is fun - I have always enjoyed trying to make things do jobs they were never intended to do.

More cheap ideas

Cat whiskers make great antennas.

Foam can be found in construction site dumpsters or purchased at a discount from the big box stores if the corner is broke. Just ask.*

Home Improvement Store ideas:

Plaster can be bought in large bags

A 3 dollar sample jar of your preferred color ground paint will go a long way.

Tile grout can be used for dirt roads (do a search on this forum for topics about that)**

Crushed granite from the garden center for packing around pavers can be sifted out to obtain different grades for ballast, tallus etc.**

Matt

*More then once I've asked for and gotten a discount on damaged goods. In fact I bought a damaged cabinet that was already marked down for an additional discount by asking.

**These last two I haven't tried myself but have read about on this and other forums.

Good start

Thanks for the thoughts, guys. Good discussion starting up.

Catching up on some of your comments: There is a gap in the plywood that you really can't see in the photos that I can poke my pinhead through and access the hidden track.

And cat hair is the secret ingredient in all of my scenery. My two cats distribute it freely across the layout.

I'll post tonight or tomorrow with tales of my rock casting travails.

Broke

Hi Jim,

I am retired and not broke but prudent with my limited income when it comes to model railroading. I am always trying to find inexpensive ways for modeling.

One way is ground cover like Woodland Scenic makes.  Go to any store that sells blenders and find you one for about 20 bucks.  Next go to a sewing center and find you some memory foam or buy you a memory foam pillow.   Go to any craft store and buy bottle(s) of any color you want of ACRYLIC paint for ground cover. And the last item to buy will be a coffee grinder.  The only place I found one of those so far a reasonable price is Target for 20 bucks.

Now take and cut the memory foam into 1" cubes.  Put the cubes of memory foam into the blender about half way. After doing that, fill the blender about three quarters way with water.  Take the Acrylic paint (the color of your choice) and squirt about a quarter to a half of the bottle into the blender or do enough as to your liking.  

After doing the above steps be sure to put the cap on it and turn on the blender and grind up the foam until it gets to small pieces.  Oh and by the way, if the color isn't dark enough put in more acrylic paint and blend away until you get the color you want. 

Upon completing the chopping process with the blender take the ground foam from the blender and spread it out on a piece of news paper to let it dry.  After it dries you now have some ground cover for your railroad.

Now for the last step and I learned this from the LSR Convention two weeks ago in which I haven't tried yet.  Take the chopped up memory foam from the blender process and run it through the coffee grinder.  This will make it into a finer ground up foam for ground cover and maybe could be used on trees also.  Since I haven't tried this yet you may have to run the foam through the grinder several time until you get the consistency you want. 

Also I went to clinic in which they used a cheese ball jar, a muffin fan mounted in the bottom of jar to make trees using Woodland Scenic ground cover.  

Hope this does you some good on cost savings.

Dave in Texas

Blender from a store?

Poor mans trestle technique

I have what I call a " poor mans trestle"  building technique. Part of it is to save money but the other part of it is that there is nowhere to buy scale stripwood around here.  I use bamboo cooking skewers for the pilings and I split wooden kitchen matches in half lengthwise for bracing lumber. I use whole matches for the tops of the bents. It may sound tedious but it goes pretty fast and one can build presentable trestles this way. They may not be perfectly "scale" or satisfy the proto purist but they look "good enough".

Michael

Speaking of cats and layout greenery

If you're going down this route, you need to check out this post:

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/needing-advice-with-a-cat-issue-12190578

Ground Foam

Thanks for that tutorial on making your own. Not sure if you can use cat hair as static grass but personally I've quit on ground foam and use static grass now. I made my own applicator out of a bug lamp I got at an auction for 10 bucks, a flour sifter I found laying around and a couple of pieces of wire. 

Matt

A rocky start

LENGTHY POST ALERT

Well, having finished the basic landform, it was time to move on to the fun part of making it look like ground. I've decided to work on the right side of the hill first - it has nearer-to-vertical surfaces conducive to making rock outcrops and I'm in the mood to make rocks, plus it faces away from my workdesk, so I don't have to constantly stare at it in case I booger it all up. I prefer putting the rockwork in first and building up the group goop around them - makes a more natural-looking terrain than looking like a rock shoved into the wet ground.

I have a nice set of Woodland Scenics rock molds that I picked up new in the package a few years ago for $7.50 at an estate auction. My castings are plaster of paris, because I have about half of a large bag of it sitting in the basement. Total cost for this phase: zero. Perfect.

I used way too much water in my first batch of rock castings. They took forever to harden adequately, and what got pulled from the mold was ultra lightweight, chalky, and wholly unsuitable for anything. Strike one.

For the next batch, I got the crazy idea of using a 2:1 plaster-to-water ratio, which incredibly worked much better. When the plaster began to crack a little when the mold was flexed (which happens relatively quickly), I moistened the hillside and pressed the mold into place, holding it in place to ensure a good bond. After several minutes, I let go of the mold to move on to the next one, allowing the mold to immediately fall off of the hill. Multiple such attempts resulted in one small rock bonded to the hill and several hardened rocks lying about.

So, I sought other means of securing the hard castings to the plaster cloth. I wet both the back of the rock and the hillside, buttered the back of the rock with wet plaster, and pressed it into place, holding it there until the plaster hardened. This resulted in a rock casting lying at the bottom of the hill and a rapidly setting glob of plaster on the hillside. (Insert colorful metaphor here) Surveying the situation, and recalling Youtube videos of guys carving their own rocks, I determined to make lemons into lemonade and carve the glob into rock. After a few minutes of carving with a putty knife and utility knife, I have a hillside that looked like, well, carved-up plaster. Apparently sculpture isn't my long suit.

Having thus far failed to yet make a rock outcropping, I sought other attachment methods. Hot glue? Fail. Good ol' Elmers glue? Fail. As a last resort, I headed to the big box hardware store and coughed up $1.69 for a tube of PL200 adhesive for my caulk gun. Spread a few beads on the back of the castings, pressed into place, and got a rock-solid (har!) attachment.

Then came the real adventure: coloring the rocks. The problem is that I'm colorblind across a spectrum of earthy-tone colors, so I'm literally flying blind here. All of my layout's rocks are gray, which suffices, but I wanted something a little more earthy for these. I have a desk drawer full of the cheapie craft paint bottles that you can get at various store for 80 cents to a dollar each. Again recalling Youtube videos I'd seen on the subject, I pulled bottles of tan, burnt umber, and black, stirring some of each into a small cup of water. Applying these washes to the rocks, I got what I'd have to call just really dark rocks. The black was, intended to setting in recesses, instead just made the rocks different shades of black. I tried drybrushing on some of the tan and then white to lighten it up, but just ended up with blackish rocks with tan splotches. Fail. More colorful metaphors as I ripped the black-and-tan abominations from the hill. Strike two.

With a disturbingly growing junk pile, a third set of rocks were cast, with extras to be used as disposable test subjects. From the paint drawer I pulled a bottle of dark grey and one labeled nutmeg brown. In trials, I squirted some grey on a foam plate with some water, mixing them with my foam brush to make a stronger wash applied as a base coat tot he rock casting. This was followed by a slightly thinner wash of the brown. Another wash of alcohol with india ink and white drybrushed highlights, and I got this sort of undefined rocky-looking color that looked suitable to my limited perception.

Ultimately I think the rocks ended up pretty much the way I had envisioned. It came at the expense of lots of frustration, a trip to the store, and a disproportionately large amount of wasted time and plaster, but I'm now loaded for bear for the next time I make an area that needs rocks.

Next: Gooping it up

Cats Whiskers

I used cat whiskers to make fly fishing rods for anglers on the river bank on my old layout, as wire looked to thick in HO scale. Lolly pop sticks for telegraph poles and plastic drink straws for pipe loads on flat cars. As the other contributors say there are loads of things you can re-cycle for model railroads. In those days of austerity here in the UK it makes sense to think outside the box for cheaper alternatives to the expensive outlay for modelling railroads. Another thing I have done recently is go down to the local timber yard and picked up off cuts of ply and mdf from jobs they have been doing. Some have been free as already in a skip and others a couple of pounds.

I hope that gives you some ideas, and wish you luck with your endeavours.

Alan (Surrey, UK) 

Other Ideas for Modeling on the Cheap

Although I do use a bit of commercial ground foam as ground cover here and there just for variety, I mostly use leaves and twigs from my yard, run through an old Mr. Coffee grinder to make a basic "forest floor" cover, plus I use coffee grounds, sand,  and real dirt from the yard, and I grind or strain all this stuff and mix it with sanded tile grout and/or white glue.  I spent $8 for a bag of grey grout that will make all my paved roads and $8 for a bag of tan grout that'll do all my dirt areas (my layout is 14'x12'), both with plenty left over.  I use anything that looks reasonable for tree armatures, including lots of different kinds of weeds from around the house, plus any twisted wire that's thick enough to hold a shape.  I'm in O scale, and I think dead branches from miniature azaleas make the best armatures of all!  Spray your tree armatures with a cheap brown or grey spray paint (Lowes or Home depot or Walmart), and while they're still wet, sprinkle on foliage made from ground foam or dried leaves (picked green, then dried, then run through the coffee grinder.)  Plant the occasional bare weed or azalea branch cluster to simulate dead trees. Cut old furnace filters into rough circles, press them onto bamboo skewers in gradually increasing sizes, and spray them green. Spray them again with hair spray, and sprinkle on fine yellow, orange, or red ground foam for fall trees. 

A length of hemp rope can be cut into short lengths and planted in dabs of white glue to make great looking weeds -- spray the rope various shades of green or yellow before planting for variety.  My thinking is that nature is infinitely varied, so I deliberately use as many different materials as I can readily find for foliage and ground cover.

I prefer building my structures in wood (and modeling Maine in the 1930s means most of my structures are wood anyway.)  For most purposes, cheap or free wooden items like match sticks (posts and railings), craft "skinny sticks" from Walmart (fences, siding, grade crossings), bamboo skewers (trestle bents, poles), sheets of copier paper (shingles), and tissue paper (tarpaper roofing) work just as well as expensive scale lumber.  I do splurge on plastic windows and doors and "fussy" architectural  trim (too much work to make my own!), but I buy the Micro-Mark window/door/trim assortments and try to figure out how to use all the pieces --  those %$#@ circular windows always wind up sitting there at the end, and I've yet to figure out what to use them for.

The sprues from plastic structure kits make great drain pipes, and if you've ever bought a wood structure kit with laser-cut "peel and stick" wood trim for going around the doors and windows, there's always a lot of material left in the sheets that you can use to make your own trim pretty easily.   Drinking straws have lots of uses, as do any diameter plastic bottles or tubes cut into appropriate lengths (tanks, culverts, etc.)  I've not yet tried it, but a 1/4" sheet of poured plaster, scored with a hobby knife before it dries, looks like an easy way to make scale stones for retaining walls, building foundations, etc.      

I love reading those stories in the modeling press about how someone made a model of something and used something off-the-wall that turned out to be perfectly in scale for the purpose -- the most recent example that comes to mind was paper clips cut into "hoops" and planted in a row to make a simple wrought iron fence. 

Tuck those strange ideas you see away; they may come in handy some day.  In general, I think finding ways to "re-purpose" cheap or even free materials is part of what makes modeling so much fun.   

Sandy

http://www.sandysacerr.com

Scavenged material

Butter up your local gas

Butter up your local gas station or your favorite store. They are a good source of styrene sheet. I get 2 10"x12" and 1 18"X36" styrene sheet every month from my local gas station. They change out their cigarette and or drink ads every month. Can be used for roads or other building projects.

Utility flags...approx 12" tall for marking underground utilities. The "flagpole" is styrene. ...most utility locating services will give you a few if you ask them.

plastic water bottles make for great window...easy to cut and you can get ALOT of windows out of 1 bottle.

Pringles cans make for a great grain elevator

window screen makes for good chain link fence

pre mixed tile grout makes for good roads...texture and color are pretty good.

when something in my house dies (blender, computer, etc..) I take it apart for small detail pieces for the scrapyard. Might even find a screw small enough for the one you lost.

Jeff

It's and ill wind...

It's and ill wind, indeed, that doesn't blow modeling material my way.

This is what I did when my toner cartridges ran dry:

http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/8108

Modeling stuff is everywhere, you just have to be cheap, resourceful... and cheap!

Concrete Pipe and other ramblings

I image that most everyone has or has had one of the flat cars with the 3 concrete pipes.  I'm diabetic and test my blood sugars daily.  The test strips come in a small with tube container that is the same size as the concrete pipes on the train car.  I keep hoping that I can come up with a way to use these so I never throw them away. Some day.

The other item I havn't quite figured out what to do with is about 8 feet of clear plastic tubing that hooked up to an oxygen supply from my last stay in the hospital.  Whether that can be considered free or not is debatable - but I still brought it home.  I drove the nurses crazy trying to get them to save the little bits of plastic which they were used to throwing away.

I'm still working on my first layout - it is fairly simple and for the most part is flat.  Since I didn't know what I really wanted and since I had access to some large sheets of cardboard (my wife ordered some mission furniture), I used a layer of cardboard on top of the thin wood top.  When it is time to bring out the chainsaw, it should be fairly easy to dismantle.

This is fun.

Cheap is the best way to go!

Four years ago, when we bought our house, I noticed a couple spots in the living room were a little "squishy".  Since we were replacing the well-worn (40 year old) carpeting anyway, I decided to rip out the old plywood and replace it with some nice new plywood.

Naturally, I saved the removed plywood.  It has come in handy for making a computer stand, and, more on topic, the beginnings of a modular model railroad layout!  The sides came from some crating that was used for shipping components of a project for my second job, and the track mostly came from some "donations" from friends.  (I admit, I did buy a couple 22" radius pieces to finish one of the modules because I didn't want to do any more digging through my accumulated track, but I spent as little as possible since I bought them at a train show!)

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42902633@N00/sets/72157633649204829/

Keep up the great work, thanks for the ground cover tip, hope I don't steal anyone's thunder here!!!

-Mark
DM Rail Group
 

Modeling on the cheap.

Free Tools. I get a lot of free tools from the Government. Yup. The V.A. is my Medical Provider and some time ago I found out that they no longer save the tools that they use on me when they do minor surgery. THEY THROW THEM AWAY! Not any more. Now I just ask for the stainless tools they use on me and they are glad to give them to me. They even package them for me. Next time u go to your Dr. ask them if you can have the instrments they use on you.                                          Bob Broadbent. Owner of the budding LM&LS  Less Money & Less Space.

Bkoke, too

As my bride rides horses there isn't a lot left for me to spend based on a ratio of about 2:100 or so it seems. We feed two horses, 3 dogs, a niece, sometimes a daughter, buy tons for the 1 grandson, 2 cars, a mortgage and I am on Social Security. Need I say more?

Dick Donaway

Cat Whiskers!

Alan.

I was wondering how the cat felt about the use of his whiskers. I would think that getting a whisker from a cat would be about the same as giving one a bath.

Dick,

The government has a free cell phone program, maybe we could lobby for a free model train program, The merits of this type of program would be the reduction of Psychiatric care costs.

Bob,

Free government tools, Whoa, I not sure about that!

Michael,

The local Chinese Kitchen has started limiting me to two chop sticks. The Moo Goo chicken sauce is really hard to get out of the wood, and the stain won't stick over it. It is going to take a long time to finish my Pecos river trestle.

****************

Years back I built a N scale layout and used crumpled tin foil for rock casting. I used Zip Texture technics to blend and color the rocks. I used wall plaster for the main forms and plaster of paris for the rocks. I don't have any pictures, but it was pretty effective.

I have started recycling old freight cars. As the price of new cars have gone up, the addition of wheels, couplers, and wire details can be justified. Not perfect but acceptable in my book.

Regards, John **************************************************************************************************************

No war is over until the enemy says it’s over.  We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote. <> Gen. James Mattis USMC

Home Made Ground Foam

I've tried the ground foam in a blender method a few times in the past, but was wholly unsatisfied with the results. It was way too coarse. Does putting the foam through a coffee grinder really make a difference in how fine it can get? I've been putting in ground goop & ground cover using available ground foam, and it's looking like the WS blended turf supply may be the critical element in how much ground I can cover, so to speak.

Jim