Scratch building terrain supplies

I recently saw an excellent tutorial for painting concrete walls on a model railroad channel:

They used some "Urban Retaining Wall" kits from a company called Walthers. The kits might be a bit pricey, but they look like they'd be very useful for Necromunda boards. One kit has wall units that are 8" long x 2.5" high, and another kit has 1.5" high walls.

This kind of stuff seems pretty easy to build from plasticard, chipboard, or foam; but these are made of plastic and could be a huge time-saver for making risers/elevation, corridors/tunnels, or even building walls.
 
Very cool idea, and good looking terrain set! Couple of reservations: 1) would it be hard to keep paint from chipping or rubbing off since the pieces are constantly being disassembled/reassembled, and 2) hopefully there isn't a "Gallowdark problem" where tolerances are so tight that a coat of paint makes the assembly points too snug.
 
Hmm. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to leave it as bare plastic. Maybe if the tabs and slots were masked and left bare? I hope someone posts about it somewhere. It does look interesting, but I still prefer my trash terrain.
 
This isn't really a scratch-building supply, but a really creative technique for getting copses of trees onto the board. It avoids the problem of having to build a bunch of fiddly armatures covered in flock, and seems quite sturdy. It's a bit of an abstraction, but still looks pretty decent. I haven't tried it myself, but figured I'd put this here in case someone needs fast forests for their board!

 
Just wanted to share some scratch built terrain I made with dog bag cores, some patterned plastic card, and a little wire.

HCyi5oY.jpg

7osYKS3.jpg

NxsV5BI.jpg

tffximk.jpg

snoVryM.jpg


Cheers,

CB
 
Not to pick on your pipe stacks but usually pipes get stacked into natural triangles rather than rectangles.

They sit in a more stable position and you only need to peg in the bottom pipes from the outside.

To get them to stay vertical like that you would usually need vertical members on either side to stop them slipping out.

Which is to say stick a couple of vertical I beams or ladders on either side and it will look a bit better and give your fighters something to climb up.
 
almic85,

It is called strip loading (reason I added the wires to hold them together), it makes it easier to remove with a fork lift (they usually add pallets between the pipes) and you can transport more pipes than pyramid loads. It also makes it blocking terrain in two directions vice just one side. ;)

Cheers,

CB
 
  • Like
Reactions: almic85
almic85,

It is called strip loading (reason I added the wires to hold them together), it makes it easier to remove with a fork lift (they usually add pallets between the pipes) and you can transport more pipes than pyramid loads. It also makes it blocking terrain in two directions vice just one side. ;)

Cheers,

CB

Well I learned something new (and had to look up the word “dunnage” to boot).

Interesting that when I was looking up why they use strip loading it seemed that it is primarily for yard to yard or yard to rail transportation, while pyramid loading seemed preferred for yard to site.

Might be why I always see it in pyramids (or hexagons) on site.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Captain Brown
For those who scratch-build with XPS foam, this technique for making stone texture looks awesome! Basically just wrap aluminum foil around either a wand-style hot wire cutter, or probably a soldering iron would work too. One of those tricks that is so simple, but I would have never thought of it before seeing this reddit post!

 
Not sure if anyone's mentioned this before (and I'm not scrolling through 30-some pages to find out), but when you've got a smooth piece of plastic or card like that, a very easy and cheap way to put a nice texture on it to to spray it with spray-glue. And let it dry thoroughly, obviously.