Tips &Tricks

... As discovered by the crew of the Paris-to-Peking Railway in their experiences on the job and as a result of their unending research into all things Model Railroad.

Poolside RailsDiscovering that HO Garden Railroading is REAL Railroading

Add Life to Your VehiclesWe’re always excited to put an engineer in the cab of our favorite locomotive. But what about the cab in front of the station? Or that garbage truck? Getting a figure to sit inside an HO Scale vehicle requires major surgery on the person (sorry about your legs, there, Jim), but is well worth the effort. Don’t forget to add women drivers, too.

Cheap Clear PlasticPolly Pockets and Littlest Pet Shop packages have a number of things in common, most important to us is that broad expanse of clear plastic packaging. Man, that’s good stuff! Actually, the clear panel out of most packaging is perfect for building and locomotive win-dows.

Cheap Light BulbsThose Christmas light sets that you buy for $1 at Christmas time or at the dollar store are a great source of cheap lighting. Watch out when you test them

as the voltage varies for bulbs from different light sets. Try wiring the bulbs in series to accomodate low volt-age bulbs. Although bulky, you can even sometimes use the sockets!

Cheap TiresHO scale truck tires turn out to be the same diameter as, get this, automotive vacuum hose! You have to cut carefully, but little O’s of hose stacked in your junk-yard, when properly weathered, look an awful lot like discarded tires. Dude, no tread on ‘em!

Craft Sticks: the Wonder MaterialCraft sticks can be used for a wide, wide variety of applications. I’ve used them to plank the deck of a

railroad platform, as floor-boards for buildings, as fence pickets, as seats in an excur-sion car, as trim for an awning (cut the tips off and glue‘em upside down under theface of the awning), as stair risers...they are a remark-ably cheap and versatile building tool!

Decorate the Walls of Your Store with Your PrinterThe inside of your HO Scale stores and ware-houses look much bet-ter with products on the shelves. Because of the

single-portal view through the front window, how-ever, the viewer doesn’t have a chance to gauge depth, which means you can use simple printed backdrops. The urban world around us abounds in printed words, which, when reduced and placed inside your store, will add a world of authenticity and scale believabil-ity.Get Your Garden to Work for YouDon’t forget the “garden” part of your Garden Railway. Parsley, Thyme and Rosemary, in addi-tion to being critical elements in that old Simon and Garfunkel song, can be grown along your HO Scale right-o’-way. The size is diminutive enough to complement the smaller scale, and are edible! I’m not so sure about Sage...

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Tips &Tricks Vol #1

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Poolside RailsTips &Tricks

Make Your Small Scale Figures Stand UpShaving the stands off of HO Scale figures reduces them to their proper height, and certainly makes them look better, but forces most of them to fall over. Solve the problem by gluing a quarter-inch square of thin clear plastic to the bottoms of their feet. The thinness of the clear plastic keeps them at near-scale height, while the clearness lets the ground below show through.

Miracle Software Part 1:If you can’t afford Adobe Photoshop,the premiere graphicsmanipulation pro-gram, go to www.gimp.org and down-load Gimp.2.6. Although a trifle cumbersome to use, this free pro-gram opens up a world of billboards, shop signs, railroad signs...you name it and you can create it in Gimp. Now, before you go all hog wild and download it, some of the things you can do in Gimp you can also do in MS Paint, which is already on your computer if it’s a PC. But Gimp, yielding results that are equal to those of Photoshop, allows you far more control, many more options, and frankly, much greater finesse in dealing with these graphics. And, for the price, FREE, you can’t beat it!

Miracle Software Part 2:

If you haven’t downloaded it yet, Google the words “Google SketchUp” and download this software. It’s

designed to work with Google Earth, but works great on its own. Need help visualizing how a structure will work? You can design the thing in complete 3D and even do a walk through the completed building! From structures to track plans to you name it, SketchUp is an indispensable part of our software suite. And it’s free!

Overhead Wiring26 gauge wire makes convincing telephone wire in G scale, and it conducts electricity! Even though its grossly out of scale in HO, its utilitarian function will overcome most objections.

Realistic RustNothing looks more like rust than rust. A gondola full of rust is easy to make: build a false bottom for your load, using supports to raise it up near the top of the car. Give the false bottom a coating of white glue, and then, using sandpaper or steel wool, scrape the shav-ings out of a piece of rust metal. Give it a blast with Dull Cote, and voila, a load of rusty junk!

Scoring Sheet StyreneThere’s a pun, here. You know, of course, that to break sheet styrene you first score it with a very sharp knife – the plastic will break along your score line when you bend it. But, if you go visit the dumpsters behind the mall, you may luck out and find discarded posters which are printed on, get this, styrene! Score!

Simple Fine-Tooth Keyhole SawYou take your basic hacksaw blade, which, by the by, you can buy rather cheaply at the dol-lar store, and you build a handle on the blade. I smeared Plumber’s Goop on one side each of two craft sticks and stuck ‘em to ei-ther side of one end of the blade. Then I wrapped them in duct tape and let them harden for about an hour. When it was done, I had a nice, easy to use hacksaw

Vol #1 - Page 2 © 2010 POOLSIDE RAILS.COM

Poolside RailsTips &Tricks

without the bother of the bow...great for cutting win-dows in styrene walls! When it breaks, which mine do because I’m impatient, it’s cheap and easy to make another!

Take Realistic Pictures from Far AwayWhen you go snap a sure-to-be-cherished picture of your HO Scale Garden Railway, or actually any small scale model, take the camera as far away as you can and zoom in on the subject. The distance flattens the focus, so that all of the elements in the picture have the same depth and look much, much more realistic.

Vol #1 - Page 3 © 2010 POOLSIDE RAILS.COM

© 2010 POOLSIDE RAILS.COM