Model Ho trains Model Railroad Scenery

Egg Cartons

Properly cut and textured egg cartons can make excellent stone-work, and even be used to simulate stone flooring.

Golf Tee

A Golf tee with it's built-in flare provides an excellent starting point for free-standing posts or hangers and can be carved and painted to create a variety of items ranging from hat stands to traffic cones. When necessary gluing it to a penny or other larger base can help stabilize it.

Herbs

Herbs such as oregano and Thyme can make excellent shrubs and bushes for miniatures.

Nuts & Seeds

Simulating small stones and gravel in a miniature environment can be very difficult because finding small enough items that vary in shape and texture realistically is hard. One solution is to crush nuts such as pecans or peanuts and glue the resulting powdered nuts into place with a spray adhesive. Since they will break up into various sizes and are textured organically they often provide excellent results. In addition many seeds and nuts can be sealed and painted as necessary to emulate fruits and vegetables

Planning scenery

It is important to think about your scenery before you begin to built. You should plan for hills, tunnels, mountains, plains, roads, cities, and water, or anything else you want to add. Remember that the purpose for building scenery is to increase the illusion that your miniature railroad is as real as the real thing. By effectively managing view blocks, you can control how much of the layout your viewers see at any single time. View blocks can be anything from a line of trees to a row of buildings. View blocks are also useful for hiding entrances to tunnels and edges of access holes.

Forced perspective

Forced perspective is another technique for enhancing the illusion of a miniature railroad. This means making objects in the background smaller in scale than they normally would be. In doing this, you're recreating the fact that things that are further away appear smaller to the eye.

Backdrops

Sometimes modelers like to make backdrops for their layouts. Modelers with larger layouts paint their walls around their layout, while smaller layout modelers often choose to make a plywood backdrop for their layout. If you don't think you're up to painting, try photographic backdrops. Some modelers take pictures that overlap on their edges, and have their prints turned into poster-size. They then trim these down and use them as their backdrops. Photographic backdrops are also sold at hobby shops ready to go.