N Gauge Model Railway - Episode 14 - More Lights, Cobblestones and a Retaining Wall

This week I mostly added more lights to the layout.  I started up a little production line making the small circuit boards to distribute the power to each of the buildings and soldering in all the streetlights.

I also finished the remodelling of the cobblestone yard in front of Woods Brothers in the South West corner of the layout.  

Funky Foam to the Rescue

I had tried a couple of different techniques to get a decent looking cobbled area but finally hit on this top tip.

Once you have created your template of the area you wish to cover with cobblestones, transfer the shape to 1mm cardboard or similar.  Glue a sheet of Funky Foam (1mm XPS foam) which you can get in Hobby Craft (12 sheets for £4) and then trim to your card.

Take a pyrograve pen or soldering Iron with a knife blade tip and carve your lines into the foam.  This produces pretty good looking cobblestone sets. 

After some painting and weathering using the sponging method, I'm really pleased with how they look.  Uniform enough but also random enough to pass muster.

As is customary I actually started this blog post at the beginning of May but got massively sidetracked by the 60cm Floating Shelf Layout Challenge.  I even made an instructional video on How to Make Cheap and Easy Cobblestones whilst this blog post was languishing in developmental Hell. 

Building a Retaining Wall 

I then needed to sort out the horrible mess I had made of the curved section of track which forms Loop C, specifically tying this into the layout yet providing necessary seperation between track and cobbled area.  This was simply a section of 2mm thick ABS foam Board jammed in the gap and then I ran a pencil atop a wagon to replicate the rise of the track onto the wall.  

A strip of foam board makes excellent capstones and this was all painted with a range of browns and greys just like the walls of the Palethorpes Sausage Factory building I made a few weeks ago.  The gap between the track and the wall was then filled with my go-to gap filler Poundland Polyfilla although this remains to be painted and foliage added.  

Finally I cut half of the branches off one of my chinese plastic tress and clued in to a traingle of foamboard before jamming it in the gap between the long workshop and the derelict warehouse.

Obligatory Running Video

I also received a long awaited depressed center wagon from eBay which now serves as the official Carrom Track Inspection Camera Car for making driver's eye videos.  Enjoy...