I’m always on the prowl looking for ways to save money and help the environment when building my model railways.
I hinted at this in 18 things only a model railway enthusiast will understand and Steve Hollands commented on how he uses coffee sticks.
This got me thinking. What else can be used from around the house to save money when building model railways?
Here are my top 10 fun recycling tips to save money when making a model railway.
Coffee sticks
These little pieces of wood have a multitude of uses around the layout, whether as sleepers, timber lying around, rail foot crossing and of course they make great stirrers for paint. Whatever the intended use, I always grab a few when offered.
Old sponges
Old sponges make great hedge rows
In a kitchen sponges quickly wear out but once liberated to your layout they have a new lease of life They make great shrubs, bushes and hedges (see DIY hedgerows and even trees) and foliage on trees and can also be used to dab paint to give a more blended coating than normal brushing.
Chinese takeaway containers
I don’t know about you but I bye a lot of ballast, flock and scatter material but unless you buy them in large bottles they’re a nightmare to store. The bags rip and the stuff goes everywhere. Luckily, I also buy a lot of Chinese takeaways and the little plastic containers that the food arrives in make great storage boxes for model-making materials.
Drinking straws
For larger scales — O and perhaps OO/HO — paper drinks straws make great drain pipes, gutters and culverts, as seen in the photo of a culvert I made from one previously. The smaller, plastic, thin ones can be used for smaller scales or downpipes and scaffolding on smaller scales.
Tea & ground coffee
Coffee granules can make great ground cover
I buy a lot of scatter material (see above) but also try to make my own where possible to save money. One of the reasons I buy a lot is the colours but for ash and dark sand, the kitchen has two ready-made and endless supplies. Tea leaves and ground coffee. Once dried out these are perfect ground cover. There’s more on this in my previous post.
Cereal boxes
Cardboard, particularly that from cereal boxes, is the perfect thickness for making buildings with. Cut it to size, glue it together and then glue printed photos of walls (scaled to size) on and you can save a fortune on buildings.
Tea bags
Several tea bags in hot water don’t just make a strong cuppa but also a wonderful wood stain effect. Brew up four or so tea bags, let them stand in hot water for a while and then place the wood (did someone say coffee stirrers?) in the cup and leave to soak for an hour or so. The wood patterning will come up a treat and will be just perfect for any model wood you need around a layout.
Pringles cans
Pringles tubes = tunnels. Say no more.
Corrugated cardboard boxes
Not so common now but if you have corrugated cardboard boxes around — the sort where the cardboard has an inner layer of ridges — they make perfect HO / OO scale corrugated metal for roofing.
Clear plastic bottles
Water bottles and the like, cut up, make great glass for windows.
What do you recycle or “borrow” from around the house for your model railway?
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Andy is a lifelong modeller, writer, and founder of modelrailwayengineer.com and its sister site. He has been building model railways, dioramas, and miniatures for over 30 years. His passion for model making and railways began when he was a child, building his first layout at the age of seven.
Andy’s particular passion is making scenery and structures in 4mm scale, which he sells commercially. He is particularly interested in modelling the railways of South West England during the late Victorian era, although he also enjoys making sci-fi and fantasy figures and dioramas.
When not making models, Andy lives in Surrey with his wife and teenage son. Other interests include history, science fiction, photography, and programming. Read more about Andy.
Plastic straws make great ways to get wires through foam a slight bit of glue and they stay in place.
1. I store my flocking, spare track wheels and track in Nat. West Bank night safe boxes. I don’t know if banks do them anymore though!
2. For tarps I use, WASHED(!), baby wipes; put over whatever you want covered and paint over, pushing them into any gaps to get the outline of what’s underneath without actually showing what it is! Useful for this next one!
3. I will breakdown ANY broken electrical stuff- the bits can be used to bulk out stowage and if covered with a tarp, they wont even need to be changed! Capacitors make great barrels when covered and there’s lots of square, blocky things for crates etc. If you dont want to cover these, either score to represent wood, add latches etc., or cover with coffee stirrer or similar.
4. Break down a flat screen of ANY size, from a phone to the biggest tv and you’ll get several sheets of various thickness plastic to use.
5. The wiring from the last two can be used for anything-coils of wire or tow ropes are 2 ideas
6. And lastly, re the wires. If I can’t use them, (usually cos there’s too much!), I’ll break it down, as far as I can, not actually strip it but remove connections etc, store it, then when I get a resonable amount, (currently about 20kgs), I’ll take it to my local scrapyard and weigh it in, in fact I do this for all metals gathered this way, ferrous and nonferrous, (tvs have metal framework, computers a fair amount of aluminium etc). The money thus received will go to my modelling account and it helps the environment! Oh. And PCB’s usually have gold; I only find out recently the scrappy takes those too. When I think how many I threw away…!
I’ll stop now.
Happy modelling, all.