ModelRailroadForums.com is a free Model Railroad Discussion Forum and photo gallery. We cover all scales and sizes of model railroads. Online since 2002, it's one of the oldest and largest model railroad forums on the web. Whether you're a master model railroader or just getting started, you'll find something of interest here.
They sell molds for making plaster rocks as i have 3 of them, my question is i have a long run of 7' or so that i need to build a thin retaining wall which has overhead tracks, which if bought could be quite pricey. Do they make a mold for smaller stone wall in a sheet form?
I seem to remember seeing a mold like that but can't remember where. (I'll post a link if I do).
They do make plastic stone walls sheets that may work well once painted. Or use one to make a mold.
Walthers has a 9" x 6" stone wall made of plastic but its not in stock and date is unknown. Can you get a wall and make cast off of that to make more, if so what material would you make it from to reuse it over and over, the ones i have are rubber.
I was considering the idea of using pebbles out of my back yard for rock and using something like drywall putty for mortar. I don't know how the putty will hold up, but I imagine that something along those lines must be pretty good.
Try a pet shop for aquarium gravel. I've used the more natural colors in spackle and it just needed to be toned down a little. Aluminum foil should work as a mold.
To answer the original message, I had a similar situation. We have a long low retaining wall in front of our freight yard, and I started covering it with Holgate & Reynolds embossed stone material. When I'd got a couple of feet along, I found that H&R had gone out of business and the stuff wasn't available any more. So after some bad words and dithering around for a few months, I resolved to copy a section of the embossed material using a rubber mold and cast polyester. I used this stuff, which somebody had already brought to the club: http://www.dickblick.com/products/smooth-on-oomoo-30-silicone/
I made a shallow box, with the wall section glued to the bottom, to cast the rubber mold. Then I took the mold out of the box and used its underside (where the wall section had been) to cast the polyester copies.
Here's a picture. Although I tried to make the copies with "fingered" ends so they would interlock, this never worked well and I kind of fudged the section joints with Squadron putty, but for a lot of them I discreetly installed some vines to cover the edges! http://tmrc.mit.edu/progress/reports/2009/12/IMG_3145.JPG
Here is a section of homemade stone retaining wall. I've made a bunch of these for my N-scale layout.
The material is 1/4-inch extruded foam. I use a metal straight edge and a screwdriver to emboss the pattern, then paint with acrylic craft paint and apply India ink washes to get the desired appearance.
I found this on YouTube and it works great. It's easy, adaptive and cheap but does require elbow grease. I built a small test scenery using this method and it works great, although still in progress...
My walls look similar to one of them pictures recently posted . I used the blue dence styrofoam , half the thickness , it, will be more flexible . I used the hot knife tool engraver ( hOt foam factory ) and created lithe walls I wanted , then sprayed with the stone effect spray (" no latex required " ) it doesn't melt lithe styrofoam . End result looks great . Good luck !!
