Newspaper Forms for Mountains

Try woodlandscenics.com

Don=A0Goebel wrote: Several years ago I attended an interesting clinic at one of the Pacific Southwest Regionals about a new method of forming mountains. Does anyone know a website or other source where I may find the details of using crumpled up newspaper, held in place by masking tape, to build the forms prior to covering with plaster cloth, rather that using a chicken wire form?

-------------------------------------------------- These sites might have something of value:

NMRA:

Mountain Modelcraft:

Woodland Scenics:

Mike Tennent's Plaster Cloth How-To Page:

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad: History of N Scale: Links to over 700 helpful sites:

2500 years ago Solomon said there truly is nothing new under the sun, and this method isn't new either. I saw it over 30 years ago in some booklet put out by Matchbox.

This isn't rocket science. Your biggest problem will probably be water from the plaster cloth making the masking tape let go from its anchor point. The newspaper can be moistenend a bit to make it not want to come uncrumpled, but again, this may affect the tape's stickiness. Perhaps a staple through the tape at the anchor points if you have problems?

Jay Back in action once again

This was the method espoused by both Linn Westcott (for his hardshell scenery technique), and in Bill McClannahan's classic book, "How to build scenery for model railroads," which is long out-of-print.

It's still the way I do it and it works great for me. Basically you know all there is to know already. You just build a loose web of masking tape, attaching it to whatever's handy. Then you loosely crumple some newspapers up and pile 'em until it looks like whatever mountain or hill you want it to look like. At this point I then put a flat layer of newspapers down, to take some of the knolls out of the newspaper wads, using a spray bottle to wet it down good so it settles.

You can then use plaster cloth, or, as was originally recommended, dip paper towels (of the gas station/public restroom variety), in some freshly made plaster, and lay the towels down over the newspaper wads. BE SURE you have a drop cloth down, since it's a very messy procedure. Cover up all track, too.

When you're done you crawl under the layout, pop off the masking tape, and remove all the newspaper wads. What you have left is a hard plaster shell.

-Gerry Leone

Actually that is pretty antique method which does work very well. Just build the mountain with wadded newspaper and tie it in place with tape. Then take paper towels or newsprint and dip in a thin plaster mix and drape on the mountain forms. Punch and dig as you desire to make the valleys and peaks of the hillside to your desire and let dry. You do have to do the plaster part quickly as most plasters don't have that long of a working life.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works every time it is tried!

All of the responses here are good ones... I'd like to add one other item.

When I built mine, I used some of WoodlandScenics stuff for grades. I wanted them pretty accurate and decided that their inclines were probably the easiest way to go. But the rest of the "framing," I just used scraps of blue foam. This was especially important for tunnels and things like that where you don't want to run the risk of plaster dripping on the track and having to clean it later.

Use the foam to build "profiles" of your hills/mountains. Build a tunnel with the foam if you have any areas that need it. Then, start crumpling up the newspaper and stacking it up. WS suggests that you crumple by kind of rolling the sides into the center so that you have kind of a bowl shaped piece. Stack these wherever you want them. Obviously, use smaller pieces to make more subtle adjustments to your final contour. I used a spray of water every so often to hold things in place. The only time I used tape was when I had a cliff that I wanted to try to hold into place, but I was doing rolling hills, not steep mountains.

I used plaster cloth. It is a great product but is pretty expensive. I watch for it on sale and stock up. Our HobbyLobby has their RR accessories on sale at half off about two-three times a year. Stock up then!

In most cases, I only needed one layer, but I did overlap nearly completely, so it ended up being two layers thick anyway. It worked well.

Take a look at...

I have some pictures posted showing the construction of my layout. Take a look at Cover Those Forms... you will get an idea of what I did & how I did it.

dlm

I still have that original article by Linn Westcott, published in MR early in 1965.

Make sure you use pure hydrocal as the plaster instead of plaster of paris, hydrocal is much harder and stronger.

You can pull out the paper after the plaster drys as hardshell is selfsupporting.

Or make friends with a few local orthopedists and get their roll ends from casts!

Jay Back in action once again

Here's some pics and verbiage of a similar project on my layout:

Mike Tennent "IronPenguin" Operating Traffic Lights Crossbucks Special Effects Lighting

The word I got is that they are going away from that kind of material in making casts.

dlm