Model Railway Scenery Tips: Easy Tools for Foam & Dirt

When it comes to spreading small pieces of landscape on your model railway layouts, few tools are more apt for the job than your fingers. You can quickly spread large amounts of ground foam, dirt and sand onto your layouts without much trouble, and end up with fairly realistic looking scenery. However, while you can get a lot done with your hands in no time, they’re not the most accurate tools you can utilize, especially for vertical or nearly vertical surfaces. In this lesson on model railway scenery tips, we teach you how to create two makeshift tools that will help you better spread things like ground foam and dirt on the vertical components of your layouts.

Model railway scenery: tips for expert toolmaking

Tools don’t always have to cost an arm and a leg. Sometimes the most useful and timesaving tools can be just a matter of smart recycling. In fact, our favorite types of model railway scenery tips are the ones that allow us to repurpose objects and help us avoid the added stress of unnecessary expenditures, while at the same time addressing an issue on the railroad. That’s why NMRA Master Modeler Gerry Leone is here to demonstrate a few model railway scenery tips that will save you some money and tackle the challenge of spreading landscape materials on vertical surfaces.

Gerry’s model railway scenery tips come in the form of two makeshift tools. The first tool will cost you nothing flat, and it’s a great way to more accurately spread ground foam on the scenery in your layouts. He’ll teach you how to combine a few basic objects you should have lying around the house to create this wonderfully simple tool, and give you the model railway scenery tips you need to best utilize it.

The second tool requires a bit more assembling and a few more model railway scenery tips, but it’s almost as costfree as the first. Gerry shows you how to create an ultra-accurate dirt blower using a refurbished plastic or glass jar and two lengths of small diameter tubing. Take advantage of these model railway scenery tips, and build your own inexpensive spreading tools to put dirt and foam exactly where you want it!