Model train hobbyists love their trains. However, to complete the scene, they also want to have realistic scenery for their train collection to roll through. For example, a locomotive pulling a series of railcars chugging around a lake populated by some duck and ringed by trees on its way to the trains station located next to a hill with cows grazing on it.
To devise your bench work’s scenery consult books, hobby centers, and learn painting and sculpting techniques to build scenes and scenarios for your model railway. Materials such as wood, plastic, glue, paper,metal, and cardboard will comprise some of the primary materials for fabricating the surrounding scenery.
Scenery design software is also available to help you design the layout for your model railroad set up. There are several vendors who sell scenery software. Listed below are some popular software titles. Additionally, you can use the internet, information from fellow enthusiasts, and information from the train hobby clubs to review and choose the best software application for your needs and experience level. You can order these applications online or the local hobby shop likely carries at least several titles.
“Model Builder” is an application that will cost around $45 and has the ability to design buildings and flats to be used in your model train scenery. You can print these buildings at your preferred scale to use in your model train scenery. You can also assemble the building using this application. You can choose the windows, trims, brick, walls and sides of the house, the roof material, stone effect walls, and slating roofs. After designing the building or house you can print it onto matte photo paper. This is a popular application among the model train hobbyists.
You can also use “Sign Creator” software to create the signs you use in your local scenery. About 200 scalable signs are provided and the software can be purchased for around $40. There are blank signs where you can type bridge heights, platform numbers, various distance to cities, local route number, and road names that can be used in your model train scenery. Print these signs onto glossy or matte paper and use them with great happiness in your model train scenes.
In your model trains scenery walls will be required to be used in stations and other structures. You can use the “Brickyard” application to choose from brick paper to stone paper and print this out. Some 20 styles are available for you to print. The scale of printing can also be specified to create realistic scenes. The application costs around $15. You will require different kinds of walls to show tunnels, sidewalks, bridge abutments, archways, parks, and building walls.
A slightly more expensive application is the “Modelers Toolkit”. This application costs around $125. The software CD contains several applications like Windows Designer, Sign Creator, American Advertising Collection, Brickyard, and Stained Glass applications. Popular among the hobby clubs with larger budgets which can more readily afford the software package for their model train scenery, this application CD pack is exceedingly popular..
As you can envision by now, powerful design software and a variety of materials allows the intrepid model railroader to design and fabricate nearly true-to-life model train scenery. Perfect to complement highly detailed model trains.