Budget modelling

[andyman7]

With the latest price increases announced by a manufacturer have come more cries that railway modelling is a rich man's hobby; that people are being priced out; etc. 

 

More than 40 years ago, as a youngster who desperately wanted to have a model railway, I was 'priced out' of the hobby because we had no spare money as a family. I never got the shiny Hornby train set; instead at the age of 11, I slowly and painfully started to assemble the bits and pieces needed through secondhand and rummage bins, the cheapest imaginable used items, and attempts to build things myself. Fast forward to now and I am lucky enough to generally be able to buy the things I really want; but actually what gives me the most satisfaction is the ability to find or make great items for next to nothing. 

 

So I thought as an antidote to the narrative that the hobby is too expensive I would start a general thread where we can post our ideas and efforts for budget modelling activity. This is not to be confused with bargain hunters which has it's own thread, or for lucky finds; it's about helping frustrated fellow modellers find ways to enjoy a satisfying hobby without access to brand new out-of-the-box superdetail stuff.

 

To kick things off, I have listed a few fairly basic things that I have picked up over the years:

 

1) It doesn't have to be DCC. DCC adds costs to every loco; DC is still a workable alternative that is cheaper, less prone to 'complex' failure, satisfying in it's simplicity

2) It doesn't have to be new or new spec; every time a new model comes out there are people that discard the superceded models that are often nearly as good. The new Bachmann 158 is a fabulous model; but the old one is pretty good too and is a fraction of the price excepting certain 'collectable' liveries

3) Ebay, shops, fairs - all have their share of overpriced tat; but there are bargains to be had if you are willing to look, search, put in some work. The more you do, the better you will get at finding things

4) Wanting something guaranteed, tested and working costs a premium. Build the confidence to buy 'sold as seen', and learn your way around some basic mechanisms and you don't need to worry.

5) Spares have value. Even if you end up with stuff that doesn't work, learn how to take it apart and sell the bits on ebay.

6) If you do come across a real bargain you can afford that isn't your era, consider buying it and sell/trade it on for the correct value to help fund something you do want. This is not 'profiteering', it's helping you afford the hobby.

7) Learn basic soldering of electrical connections. You can buy a soldering kit for under a tenner that will let you do this, and is the single most useful repair you can do

 

Hopefully this is just a starter, but the message is that if you really want a model railway, it can be a lot more affordable than it might look.

 

 

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by andyman7

[Phil Parker]

Buy what you need, not what you want. If you model a branch line, you'll need very little stock. If you insist on buying every shiny new box that arrives in the shops, the the hobby gets expensive.

[ISW]

7 minutes ago, andyman7 said:

To kick things off, I have listed a few fairly basic things that I have picked up over the years:

 

Here's a few more to add to your list:

1. Use AliExpress for accessories / scenic items. Yes, the quality isn't quite so good, but this can generally fixed with a little work. Allow ~1-month for delivery though.
2. Consider buying a simple airbrush. Then you can change the livery of those TheBay purchases.
3. If you have 'some' soldering experience, and enjoy jigsaw puzzles, then consider buying electronic kits instead of pre-built items (eg: MERG kits).
4. 'Do up' those old Lima coaches and wagons. With a little work they can look 90% of the expensive current crop of vehicles at <25% of the price.

Ian

[33C]

Live near a recycling centre? Do they have a shop. Most now do. Tell them what you are looking for and they may keep it back for you if anything comes in. Sadly I have seen whole collections of models go in the bins which are not always rescued for resale. ( A whole, boxed Trix collection was recently just tipped in the bin, which was rescued but a boxed Trix Flying Scotsman and 4.4.0. were just out of reach! The rest sold for £40!) They are great for other types of modelling media too. Wire,plastic,brass,copper bins. Found a lot of printers tin which is great for bodies, 1p a sheet. 

[Chris116]

Following the advice above before it was given I was in a secondhand shop recently and they had a very dusty Bachmann Ivatt tank. No means of testing and the wheels appeared to be locked in position, almost as if some glued in place. £8 for what could have been only suitable for the back of the loco shed my layout does not have seemed a good bet. Got it home, removed the body to find large amounts of carpet fuzz and small screws wrapped around the worm gear which was carefully removed and a perfect working loco has joined my stock list. Once the dust had been removed from the body it also looks very nice. 

[cypherman]

Hi all,

Okay Ebay, yes I said it. Ebay. Look for things that are spares and repairs. Quite often things that are sold as such have minmal problems that are easily fixed. especially things with cosmetic issues. These engines all cost me very little to buy. Yes I did spend some money on fixing them up. But you do not have to spend as much as I did. Most cost less than £30,00 to buy and finish.

So here are some pictures of what I bought and made from the puchases.

1 The  Lima small prairies. Cost me £15.00 to buy the 2 prairies and pannier tank. Pannier tank only needed minor cosmetic work. The 2 small prairies needed much more work. One if I remember rightly ended up with a new cd motor for £12.00. The most I have ever spent on a single item on these engines. The rest of the bits and pieces came from plasticard, Brass strip and bits out of my spares box. The transfers for the prairies came from Dapol. You can buy all their transfers for their ex Airfix kits seperatly for £1.50 a set. But if you were basically skint you could have made one decent engine out of the 2 prairies without spending very much more.

2 Lima J50's. They cost me £6.00 for the pair. Again they were rebuilt the same way as the priaries. Both motors once serviced were good runner. One needed a new set of wheels. But I had a spare set. Everything else came out of my spares box. Now I managed to make 2 very nice models out them. But like the prairies you could have made one decent engine out of the 2 and you would have only spent £6.00.

3 Lima crane. This cost me £12.00 and some cheap acrylic paint.

4 Hornby Hall. This cost me £10.00 if memory serves me right. Once serviced it ran well. It came with no tender but I had a spare tender from a defunct Hogwarts Castle that had been bought for spares to rebuild another Hogwarts Castle I had. The nameplates and numbers cost me £9.99. Everything else came from as before plasticard and spares box. Then a pot of paint.

Honourable mentions to 2 Hornby N15 Sir Dinadans and a Triang Princess that cost me just under £40.00 each to do.

So just a few that I have done very cheaply. All these engines have been documented in more detail here on RMweb.

Edited January 5, 2022 by cypherman

[crompton 33]

i keep to one era that way you can keep the cost down.  Plus i like some of the old Lima diesels.  I try to bye models that don't work and replace the motors with a CD drive,

[griffgriff]

There are bargains to be had on eBay …. You just need to know the value of the things you’re buying. Don’t get involved in bidding wars and keep an eye out for expensive postage.

 

Griff

[BR traction instructor]

Every experienced modeller has various projects that are unlikely to ever see completion. Socialising with fellow modellers locally will allow arrangements/deals to be struck to rescue such models from never seeing the light of day again.

 

Having a model railway approach i.e. choosing a simple prototype location, where you just watched the trains go by is the exact opposite of trying to cram every square inch of a baseboard with expensive items. Modelling a simple prototypical location will be a whole lot more realistic too.

 

BeRTIe

Edited January 4, 2022 by BR traction instructor

[pete_mcfarlane]

16 minutes ago, griffgriff said:

There are bargains to be had on eBay …. You just need to know the value of the things you’re buying. Don’t get involved in bidding wars and keep an eye out for expensive postage.

 

Griff

Often stuff with expensive postage works out cheaper, as fewer people bid for it. Ditto stuff with a high starting bid. 

[eastwestdivide]

Have a look at the old thread "£100 layout" for inspiration?

 

[andyman7]

Thanks for that link, a perfect antidote to being priced out of hobby!

[griffgriff]

3 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

Often stuff with expensive postage works out cheaper, as fewer people bid for it. Ditto stuff with a high starting bid. 

I agree…. But it can also be a shocking surcharge.  I often go the click and collect route these days….. With the added advantage that there’s always someone in at my local coop  

 

Griff

[SamThomas]

5 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

Often stuff with expensive postage works out cheaper, as fewer people bid for it. Ditto stuff with a high starting bid. 

Many people have a phobia about the cost of postage shipping.

 

If an item is worth say £50 to me I could not care less of it is £45 for the item & £5 for shipping or £30 for the item & £20 for shipping - it's the cost of getting it onto my doorstep that I look at.

 

In a way I think it's a legacy from the days when you did not pay commission to ebay/paypal on shipping fees.

[Trainnoob]

11 hours ago, andyman7 said:

With the latest price increases announced by a manufacturer have come more cries that railway modelling is a rich man's hobby; that people are being priced out; etc. 

 

More than 40 years ago, as a youngster who desperately wanted to have a model railway, I was 'priced out' of the hobby because we had no spare money as a family. I never got the shiny Hornby train set; instead at the age of 11, I slowly and painfully started to assemble the bits and pieces needed through secondhand and rummage bins, the cheapest imaginable used items, and attempts to build things myself. Fast forward to now and I am lucky enough to generally be able to buy the things I really want; but actually what gives me the most satisfaction is the ability to find or make great items for next to nothing. 

 

So I thought as an antidote to the narrative that the hobby is too expensive I would start a general thread where we can post our ideas and efforts for budget modelling activity. This is not to be confused with bargain hunters which has it's own thread, or for lucky finds; it's about helping frustrated fellow modellers find ways to enjoy a satisfying hobby without access to brand new out-of-the-box superdetail stuff.

 

To kick things off, I have listed a few fairly basic things that I have picked up over the years:

 

1) It doesn't have to be DCC. DCC adds costs to every loco; DC is still a workable alternative that is cheaper, less prone to 'complex' failure, satisfying in it's simplicity

2) It doesn't have to be new or new spec; every time a new model comes out there are people that discard the superceded models that are often nearly as good. The new Bachmann 158 is a fabulous model; but the old one is pretty good too and is a fraction of the price excepting certain 'collectable' liveries

3) Ebay, shops, fairs - all have their share of overpriced tat; but there are bargains to be had if you are willing to look, search, put in some work. The more you do, the better you will get at finding things

4) Wanting something guaranteed, tested and working costs a premium. Build the confidence to buy 'sold as seen', and learn your way around some basic mechanisms and you don't need to worry.

5) Spares have value. Even if you end up with stuff that doesn't work, learn how to take it apart and sell the bits on ebay.

6) If you do come across a real bargain you can afford that isn't your era, consider buying it and sell/trade it on for the correct value to help fund something you do want. This is not 'profiteering', it's helping you afford the hobby.

7) Learn basic soldering of electrical connections. You can buy a soldering kit for under a tenner that will let you do this, and is the single most useful repair you can do

 

Hopefully this is just a starter, but the message is that if you really want a model railway, it can be a lot more affordable than it might look.

 

 

 

I would also recommend not bothering with any kind of finscale track system if your budget is limited. That's for if you have some extra funds to throw at it.

 

Finscale track is nice but standard Hornby and PECO track works and can be made to look Good.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Trainnoob
MY STUPID FAT FINGERS AGAIN! fixed

[The Johnster]

It can be done for much lower cost than might first appear, but you have to do a bit of thinking first.  I have spent a lot more on my layout than I originally thought I was going to, and I haven't finished spending yet, though the big ticket items are already bought.  I'm a pensioner on a very restricted budget but have been able to manage to buy sufficient locos and stock to run my timetable and have locos out of service every 10 or so timetable days for boiler washouts, which I would contend is a matter of some hope for those horrified by the increasing prices.  And make no mistake, they are going to increase a lot more, having been held artificially low for the last 3 decades by the exploitation of cheap labour and factory overheads in China, days that are over.  Chinese wages are increasing along with their standard of living, rentals and running costs of manufacturing and assembly plants there are also increasing, as is the price of raw materials and shipping, and customers are perpetually demanding better detailed and more highly specced models.

 

The Johnster method of not spending more money than you have to is predicated on some basic principles, as follows:-

 

1) Build a small railway and run small trains on it.  You'll save on everything because you'll need less of it. 

 

 

2) DC control, not DCC.  DCC bells and whistles are marvelous, but will have to be paid for.  If you have to have it, then basic principle no.1 will mean that you spend less on it, but you will save a lot of money if you can live without it, and I have no trouble living without it.

 

 

3) Having built a small railway on which you run small trains, manually operate your points and signals, saving on point motors, switches, and wiring.

 

 

4) Don't pay full RRP for locomotives.  I've bought about a third of my stud brand new, but not paid full RRP for any of them.

 

 

5) Don't buy new when secondhand will do the job.  There will be a bit of judgement required here, but an older tooling can often be pretty good in terms of detail and performance, and even if it isn't as good as you'd ideally like, both those things can be worked on by yourself.  So long as the basic form is correct and to scale, it is simply a matter of how much work you are prepared to put in.  You'll need to avoid models that are hopelessly out of scale and inaccurate to the extent that they are difficult to correct, including the LIma prairies and pannier mentioned above; the prairies are too tall in order to accommodate the motor and the pannier uses a chassis developed for the J50 which means that the splashers are in the wrong place.  Lima mk1s are capable of being worked up, though, and new buffers, flush glazing, and some proper handrails will transform them into models that will have to be looked at very closely to distinguish them from current RTR.

 

Things to avoid would include older goods stock, which often has moulded handbrake levers and brake shoes out of alignment with the wheels, and both Hornby and LIma use incorrect underframes that are too long for their mineral wagons, the bodies of which are stretched to match.  There are a few well known inaccurate wagons still being churned out, like Bachmann's LMS cattle wagon, incorrect in just about every dimension, of the Dapol Fruit D, which dates back to Hornby Dublo days via Wrenn.

 

 

6) Adopt a protypical and practical approach to your railway's needs, by which I mean, imagine that you are the person employed by the xx branch railway company to acquire it's stock.  Do not buy any more than you need to run the timetable; in my case that's a dozen locomotives, 2 auto sets of 2 trailers each, 2 loco hauled sets of 2 coaches each and a strengther between them, a dozen or so  general mechandise goods vehicles, 20 mineral wagons (10 loaded 10 empty), and 3 brake vans.  This again bears out the wisdom of principle no.1.  Real railways make considerable effort to utilise their locos and stock to the best effect so that they do not carry a surplus; the idea is to make money for your shareholders, and you will do this as cheaply and with as little equipment to pay for and maintain as you can within the limits imposed by safety.  You can carry more people and goods by going faster, but this costs more in equipment and maintenance, so a balance must be struck.  It is never perfect but you aim to get it to be as good as you can. 

 

A huge amount of enjoyment and satisfaction can be got out of building and operating a model railway, and this is to a certain extent not dependent on size of layout or how many locos you have.  The degree of detail and realism you achieve is not dependent on those factors either; in fact a smaller railway can be more finely detailed without the detailing becoming an impossible workload.

[Nearholmer]

No mention so far of acquiring skills, which is the best way to save money.

 

If you have plenty of free time, which I know not everyone does, but most of us do at certain points in life, then spend time making or modifying things, even really simple things from cardboard and bits of old clothes-peg (trad ones are made from fine grained beech, a great material) to learn basic craft-knife use.
 

Teach yourself soldering.

 

Etc.

 

Make loads of slightly iffy models, but each one slightly less iffy than the previous one. Eventually, they cease to be iffy.

 

Read 1950/60s Railway Modellers, because at that time doing it on the cheap was normal, so they are full of good tips.

 

If you have a few pounds available, buy tools, rather than r-t-r models.

 

And, don’t get caught-up in the modern ‘Facebook trend’ of comparing your efforts to those of a master-craftsman and coming away crestfallen. The best becomes the enemy of the good if you’re not careful.

 

Consider scales/gauges other than 00.

 

Perverse as it may seem, 16mm/ft on 32mm gauge is actually the cheapest format I’ve come across, because scratch building from cheap materials is dead easy, and things like wheel-sets, and the bits to build a simple 4W locos chassis, are available at ‘pocket money’ prices (see ‘IP Engineering’ for instance). You can even scratch build the track from cardboard and coat-hanger wire or wood strip, and cheap toy ‘action figures’ from charity shops can be bodged to become scale people.

 

Like the OP, it took me roundly forty years to get from scrabbling around at jumble sales looking for deeply secondhand things to cannibalise, to being able to splash out on fancy stuff, and the skills and tools acquired  in the jumble sales and old cereal packet days have lasted longer than anything else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by Nearholmer

[The Johnster]

Skills will certainly save you money, and you don't have to be up to the Pendon/Tony Wright level to benefit from them.  Scratch, the material the very best models are built from, takes time but even the very highest quality scratch is very cheap.  If you have the tools and skills to wind an armature, you can build models for the cost of the materials, and if they are for your own use, you can discount the normal hourly rate that you would charge if you were doing it for someone else.

 

But even at a lower level, being able to convert items to similar types, repainting to different liveries, and adding extra detail is much cheaper (not to mention more fun) than badgering RTR companies to produce the exact version of the class in the exact livery you want.  A large class of locomotives like a Black 5 or a 47 has all sorts of variations that appeared on members of it during the class's service, and many changed and even changed back over time.  Consider the GW 57xx; top feeds, whistle shields, rivets, a version with no vacuum brakes and steam reverse for shunting.  Top feeds were attached to the boilers (no sh*t, Sherlock) and boilers were swapped at overhauls because  the rest of the loco was ready for return to revenue service so the boiler the loco came in with, which may or may not have had a top feed, was replaced by another one from the boiler shop, which may or may not have had a top feed. 

 

As details and transfers are available to suit nearly* all the liveries these engines carried during their 40 years of revenue service, as are number plates, you can model any variation at any given time, perhaps to match a photography, but you will need to be able to at least fix the new number plates, which may include a BR smokebox number and shedcode plate, and possibly also repaint the model, remove the top feed and it's associated plumbing and make good the finish, replace the whistle shield, and so on.  The cost, glue and paint, is minimal once you have estabished a basic tool kit, which can be done for less than the price of a small new loco and potentially provide you with hundreds of them.

 

Basic weathering techniques, retrofit details, crew, real coal, glazing for the spectacle plates of older models, are all worthwhile improvements to even the best RTR offerings, and depend on tools and basic skillsets.  These come with experience, but only if you can be bothered with them, and it does seem that, for example, wishlist and frothing threads that attempt to predict what new RTR is about to hit the market often contain pleas for locos that have been available for years, but not in the livery the poster wants.  Well, buy some paint brushes, paints, perhaps an airbrush, and the transfers, practice painting on old models until you can get a reasonable finish, and do it yourself!  If the loco, coach, or wagon you want is not available as an RTR model in the desired livery, make it.

 

I want a 1938 Collett 31xx, a class of 5 locos that are very unlikely to ever be available as RTR models and for which there is not even a kit, and TTBOMK never has been.  But I think I can achieve a reasonable representation using body parts from an old Airfix 61xx, the boiler of an old Mainline 43xx, and cab and bunker from an old Mainline 56xx.  It needs smaller driving wheels, and I have encountered problems building it, and while I have not done anything to it for several weeks now, I fully intend to resume hostilities in the fairly near future (got distracted with an extension to the layout and putting a colliery on it).  I have lost a battle, not the war.  I would not be able to consider this without the ability to cut and shape plastic bodies, replace wheels, and hacksaw a chassis block.  It looks at the moment as if it's going to add up to about £130-150, about right for an RTR loco of this size, but I have to consider how much it would cost me to have professionally built, the only other alternative. and we are probably not far short of a grand for that!

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

If you have a few pounds available, buy tools, rather than r-t-r models

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Make loads of slightly iffy models, but each one slightly less iffy than the previous one. Eventually, they cease to be iffy.

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

then spend time making or modifying things, even really simple things from cardboard and bits of old clothes-peg (trad ones are made from fine grained beech, a great material) to learn basic craft-knife use.

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Teach yourself soldering.

 

What he said.  As far as 'iffy' goes, you are reading the ramblings of a man who, as a teenager, made a 42xx out of a Hornby Dublo 8F, Airfix construction kit City of Truro boiler, and Airfix construction kit 61xx running plate, cylinders, and slide bars.  I have no moral high ground to hold here.

[RJS1977]

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

2) DC control, not DCC.  DCC bells and whistles are marvelous, but will have to be paid for.  If you have to have it, then basic principle no.1 will mean that you spend less on it, but you will save a lot of money if you can live without it, and I have no trouble living without it.

 

 

Indeed - an isolating switch is around £1 and the wire might cost something similar. Much cheaper than say £15 for a basic DCC chip!

[RJS1977]

15 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 

What he said.  As far as 'iffy' goes, you are reading the ramblings of a man who, as a teenager, made a 42xx out of a Hornby Dublo 8F, Airfix construction kit City of Truro boiler, and Airfix construction kit 61xx running plate, cylinders, and slide bars.  I have no moral high ground to hold here.

 

And that's actually modelling, rather than opening a box! You will have the satisfaction that it is something you've built yourself.

 

(On similar grounds, I built an Aberdare out of an Airfix City of Truro and a Lima Class 09!)

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, RJS1977 said:

 

Indeed - an isolating switch is around £1 and the wire might cost something similar. Much cheaper than say £15 for a basic DCC chip!

And you need the £15 chip in each locomotive.  DCC is definitely a disposable income thing...

 

1 hour ago, RJS1977 said:

 

And that's actually modelling, rather than opening a box! You will have the satisfaction that it is something you've built yourself.

 

(On similar grounds, I built an Aberdare out of an Airfix City of Truro and a Lima Class 09!)

 

You're very kind to an old drunk, RJS.  I wouldn't dignify any of the stuff I made back in my teens with the title of 'modelling'; it was bodgery red in toof and clore, impressionist at best.  It was a very useful learning period and ground training for some stuff I did later on that was a little less distant from the concept of modelling, though.

 

It also taught me the art of improvisation, making do with what is to hand rather than allowing the lack of something to delay you, which is another useful skill in the money-saving sense.  A common feature of those days was ideas in magazines for using household or similar items as models of something else entirely, and this still 'informs' some of my current modelling activity.  For instance, the use of Burger KIng/Motorway Services/Sainsbury Cafe/Wetherspoons coffee stirrers, for which the price is right and which have been pressed into all sorts of roles at Cwmdimbath.  My favourite is cutting them in half lengthways to use as footboards on erasatz Dean 8'6" bogies on Triang shorty clerestories.  Take the B1 BR bogie supplied by Triang, cut the tiebar out, and superglue a half-width coffee stirrer with cutouts for the axleboxes on at the level of the  seam on the axleboxes.  The result is not a scale model, but with a few other improvements like card interiors, handrails, glazing in the clereestory lights, and better buffers, repaint, and it will lift the old Triang toy into an acceptable layout model, and if you cut'n'shut two of them to provide the correct number of compartments and scale length, a tolerable serious-ish model of a slightly generic Dean non-gangwayed clerestory, 

 

Proper 3D printed 8'6" Dean bogies, complete with footboards, are available from Stafford Road Works on Shapeways, but they are about £20 a pair, so bodging the Triang B1s will save you £60 on a 3 coach rake, call it £50 when you account for the new buffers but worth the saving all the same. 

 

It is an irony that it it not until one becomes older and better off in terms of disposable income that one achieves a level of proficiency in such skillsets, when really you needed them to save money a few decades before.  But, as a pensioner who has to watch the pennies, I'm reaping the benefit now!

 

The quality, finish, performance, and detail of current RTR and RTP is such that, for a good number of prototypes and periods, a pretty good model railway can be put together out of the box.  But it will cost you a good many beer vouchers, and look the same as countless others.  Doing at least some of the work yourself is fun, satisfying, saves money, and makes your railway individual and unique to you.  That's got to be worth learning the basic skills, hasn't it?

[Northmoor]

Well done @andyman7 for starting this thread; your opening comments and those from all the other contributors, I couldn't agree with more.  The argument over the cost of model trains has been rehearsed for decades; yes new locomotives seem a lot of money but in real terms, Hornby-Dublo locos were about the same price in the 1960s and those who started modelling at that time are still doing it, so I guess it wasn't a barrier was it?

 

When you buy your first house (for those able to do so at all....), you don't buy a 4-bedroom detached with a swimming pool in the garden.

When you buy your first car, you don't buy a new Range Rover.

So when starting out in model railways, you don't have to start with a £200 DCC Sound-fitted LMS Duchess!

 

If the moans come from people who feel that in middle-age, they haven't the time left to develop the skills that the best modellers have developed over decades - and NOBODY started out as an expert - they need to look at the work of people like Tom Foster and Jesse Sim who are both about 20 years younger than I am.  It hasn't taken them decades to get to that standard, but they did practice and we know what that makes.

[MartynJPearson]

Another suggestion is to look at what you are throwing away. Not suggesting you become a hoarder to the extent that Kim and Aggie would run for the hills, but there are everyday items which can be salvaged saving money. Card is the obvious example but also the clear rigid and semi rigid plastic used in packaging does a good job for windows on buildings. While it's perhaps a little on the flexible side, I've had success with the film from Tunnocks Teacakes boxes (other confectionary is available). Not sure if there is a correlation between making a building and gaining weight....

 

On the subject of buildings, paying a small amount for a few brickpapers gives you enough to go ahead and create as many of your own with the aforementioned salvaged materials. 

[SamThomas]

I have to admit being a bit of an "out of the box/kit" modeller.

 

Much as I admire those that can produce excellent modelling I lack what they all have in common and that is patience - I simply do not have it for some tasks although I can spend hours, days even on techical stuff like control systems.

 

Coffee stirrers are useful, so is the clear plastic packaging, polystrene packaging (the hard cardboad stuff too) can be used as the base for landscapes, old (washed) tee shirts for scenic base's, power supplies from dud laptops monitors useful for lighting/accessories.

Always useful to check out skips*** where shopfitting is being do (but please nothing electrical, especially cable) - the amount of good stuff junked from shopfitting is criminal.

 

Card is an underrated material - a good source of decent card is shop "offer" cards (the ones that hang down).

 

Backscenes, especially town/urban - make your own, take pictures with your smartphone, little bit of time with even the basic Microsoft editors you can get them right & print them out yourself - most people have a colour printer or know someone who has. Also, you can make your own brick paper.

 

Know someone who builds plastic building kits ? - cadge the left over windows & doors.

 

There are many ways to model & produce excellent work on a budget.

 

*** always ask for permission.

[jcm@gwr]

26 minutes ago, SamThomas said:

 

Always useful to check out skips*** where shopfitting is being do (but please nothing electrical, especially cable) - the amount of good stuff junked from shopfitting is criminal.

 

 

*** always ask for permission.

 

I disagree, but not for the reason you're thinking.

Grab as much cable as you can, then bag it up and weigh it in at your local scrap metal

dealer, you'll need to take ID for proof of who you are (driving licence).

I'm getting about £15 per rubble bag full, no need to strip it, just separate out any BT

cable, they won't/can't accept it, and its's normally paid straight into your account.

It's a great way to fund your hobby!