New Junction EP21 - Create your own scenery for under £15! 

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Worth considering a mic or not running trains when youre talking, near impossible to hear you.

Looks to be an excellent source of affordable scenery I look forward to buying a coffee blender in the new year. Happy new year everybody 😊

The club I belong to has done something similar in the 1990's. We use latex foam from a matteress and died it then put it through a mincer. Any large pieces were put back through the mincer to make smaller. We then sorted it into differant sizes using a siv. The different sizes and colours where stored in bread bags.

Great idea. I'll be replicating this on my layout at the appropriate stage. One tip, instead of using green paints, try blending blues and yellows at various percentages. The colour variation almost becomes infinite then.

An excellent video, Richard, much appreciated. Regards, Charlie

Tried to take a sponge from the kitchen and tried to use her smoothie blender . Now the dog house and on breakfast duty 😂 great idea love the video

Ingenious

Hi Richard, nice to see you having a bit of fun with making your own foliage. After seeing Susannah’s videos I thought I’d seen it done before, about 6yrs ago a chap by the name of Gormo@ Great Chesterford Junction demonstrated a similar way, as well as making your own static grass. With the cost of many products these days it’s nice to see people sharing their ideas.

Incredible !!!! I love It !!!!

Now that’s an excellent idea.

A great 'how to' Richard!!! Special thanks to Suzannah! Cheers Onno.

Confession- I only came across your channel a week ago. I have binged videos 1 to 21 so far. Excellent stuff, particularly for a man thinking about starting a model…….

What a great idea! See you at Warley!

Hi Richard, nice to see you yesterday at Warley. I’ve remembered where I saw a modelu of you driving a train, it is on the Warley layout in their lounge area. Andy

For cheap ballast use chinchilla sand, which is very similar to Woodland Scenics fine blend but costs £5.50 for a 7lb bag in Pets At Home. It does resemble 'newer' ballast so mixing in some brown might help.

That is an amazing way to make scenery and it looks so good at the same time! 😁👍I will definitely be using this method in the future. Thanks for the great idea😁👍❤️keep up the nice work and can't wait for your layout to be finished 👍

😳 wow, that's a nice trick I haven't seen before. ❤ yes, the coffee grinder will be ruined but who cares 😂 - and we have loads of old sponges !!!

Green scotchbrite pads make great hedges. Flock can be added to make them look more like Privet hedging. Dried tea leaves make good flock for (autumnal) trees too

Gald to see it work , use to do the same with sawdust to make grass 😎😎😎

Never thought of doing this so bougt my self a battery rechargeable grinder - BIG mistake! It did not have the power to push through the initial larger pieces even when I broke them up smaller. Now have a cheap mains one and enjoying experimenting with this great idea. Thanks and have subscribed.

Been doing this for years. I found a 3" x 20" x 20" sponge cushion left out for trash somewhere, gave it a good wash and now have a ton of sponge.I don't mix my paint at the blending stage, but rather do it as a separate process later on. I then also add some white pva wood glue to the colouring mix just to give the result some bind, which makes it handy for making tree covering. It can be pulled into smaller clumps quite easily when dry and covers a branch quite nicely.

Ahh brilliant…👍

Very good idea

Nice to see you again today mate, sorry I didn't stay for longer to chat to you (not that you wanted me to any way! 🤣), you looked very busy! 👍😊

Great idea

Brilliant

looks fab at a distance behind you in the penultimate shot - which of course how it's realistically going to be seen by 99% of people.

Loved this! Some people have the knack of looking at a household item and instantly knowing what other purpose it could be used for. Sadly I'm not one of those people so it would be great to see you do more on DIY hacks such as this!

Great technique Richard. Big shout out to Susannah

Yep . I agree. Background noise was way to loud in places. . other than that. . Great tips and video 👍

I can almost hear Woodland Scenics (other brands are available) having a right old fume over that! Great results.

Excellent idea.

That’s a superb method and so relatively simple! 😯 I love that you can just add a bit of colour hither and thither to create different tones and sizes of clumps. Love it, not least because it gives me a great source of material in future whenever our sponges are old and knackered ☺️ Cheers Rich, great thing to pass on: she is a genius! 🤓👍🍻🍀

Been doing this myself for a while. It's a great technique. As you don't get a lot of paint in one of those little bottles, I can recommend emulsion match pots. You have to search about for colours you probably wouldn't paint your living room but it's worth it. Also, your local pound shop does ten packs of plastic food containers to hold each different batch and you don't get in trouble for pinching the good Tupperware! Cheers

Even though I’m a long way off doing any sort of scenery I may have to give this method a try when I finally come to adding scenery, keep up the good work Richard.

It’s such a good idea ,not only is she a good modeller she was a great bus driver here in west London ,it’s great we can share ideas Richard 😊😊 Mark 👍🏻

Just great idea mate

Well being as I hate coffee I've no need for a coffee grinder . Until now . What a fantastic idea. And being as I'm building a new layout that will be great fun. Thanks mate nice 1 .

Excellent idea, great video as always.

Fantastic video Richard, really useful tip i shall try this at somepoint, thanks for sharing. Hopefully see you at Warley!

Ooooooo I love this! Going to try it with White for my Christmas Micro Layout

Absolutely cracking idea, on the list of things to try when i get back to green stuff. Pretty sure that Pete Waterman did something similar for MT3 in one of the many vids documenting its build. Things like this, shared, is what makes our hobby so much fun, one idea gets spread and we all add our own twist and create a unique feature. Off to go look now in the shelf of gadgets that you brought but dont use to see if i can 'borrow' without SWMBO seeing😂 Thx for another a* vid Richard, and I'll be sure to drop by the stand and say hello on Saturday

cool

Looks great. Given I'm moving onto scenery on my TT layout, I'll be looking at investing in a cheap coffee grinder for this purpose soon.

Really enjoy your content and the journey with New Junction. I know it isn't easy to drop money on things right now but a lapel mic would do wonders for you as I've noticed audio has been getting harder to hear in the last few episodes. Keep it up!

I would have to get myself a separate coffee grinder. How about Balast? Here in South Africa, many midle class people have a swimming pool. These pools have pool filters that use sand to filter the water. Upon closer inspection. A 40 kg bag will go a long way on a HO layout, and the crushed stone closely resembles Balast it may need colouring.

Rather than using the small model makers paint pots, I'd suggest the much larger tubes of acrylic paint meant for kids, it's pretty much exactly the same stuff but not colour matched to a particular real life paint so is much cheaper

Great video

I can see sales of coffee grinders going through the roof at Amazon! When I saw Susannahs video, I did comment that the coarse fibre could be utilised as well. Dyed with a dark brown or black it makes excellent blackberry bushes when sprinked with fine green turf.

Gotta make the most of the mk5 sets when they are still prototipical!

Great idea, I am just starting my layout scenics etc, this will really help 👍🏻

Nice... ❤❤❤❤

Hi Richard, I love all these money saving techniques and you can make exactly what you are after. Personally I use car sponges as they 3 for £1 (or were lol) See you at Warley.

And I'll try this tomorrow cheers Richard for the idea mate

Nice video Richard. That's an awesome idea. Not only is it a cheap way of making your own bushes but it is like a fraction of the cost of branded bushes you would buy from the shop. I'll have to give this a go. - Nicholas.

turned out really nice! good job

I have been using that method for years! More for your buck if you buy car sponges and packs of 10 scourers at the pound shop

Hi Richard… I will definitely be having a go at that. 👍👍

Great stuff

Very nice idea

That looks so professional

Great technique Richard, I've used on models in the past. If you get a chance at Warley come and see us at the Buggleskelly Station stand (D11A) :) Tom

Genius! I guess you could use car wash sponges too? They're often available in packs of 3 from discount shops and would provide loads of raw materials! May well have a go at this myself.

Great Stuff Richard

What a Really great idea . With working in a Warehouse that sells these for the catering Trade i actually have tried this and was really Impressed with the Results 😎 The only problem i did have i Got the Coffee grinders Mixed up after i cleaned the one i used for this project with the one in the Kitchen . So been having Green coloured Coffee 🙄😂😂

Great video keep it up

Good video on channel thanks lee

Nice to see you are using this method Richard. I honestly would have thought you knew about this yourself & used years ago. Its cheap & cheerful. You asked if anyone else has made similar. I've got 3 different videos on my channel from 4/5 years ago, but on a much larger scale using a liquidizer for chopping up foam. Add Pva glue to make Clump Foliage. I made loads of different colours. Maybe you might like to take a look at my videos. Sorry about the poor camera work, but these were my 1st ever attempt at doing RU-vid videos. Keep up the good work & happy modelling. Cheers & ATB Kevin 🤝

👍👍Great video! I'll have to try that myself 🚂🚂

Thanks! A lot of information for such a short video. I do wonder if cleaning the grinder is necessary and how how to go about it. Acrylic is water soluble but only before it dries. I guess this complicates cleaning, but only if cleaning is desired of course.

This is going to be something my grandson can try out when he starts to build his 009 layout. It will be a cost-effective way for him to do some scenics. Maybe we'll get to see some used on one of his video updates on his channel Dylington Model Railway once he gets started on it. Cheers James 🙂👍

Great idea, may well put it into practice on my layout. Hope to catch up with you at Warley.

LNR Models video I watched over a month ago.

Yes!!! Richard listened to me in the livestream. The Caledonian sleeper mk5

Instead of using sponges you could use coffee beans. It would look great as a ground cover (pun intended) and the aroma would be incredible! lol. Have a great time at Warley Richard.

good

might be better than relying on trying to buy NOCH and busch and woodland scenics all the time.

I saved the foam from an old sofa so have years worth of clump foliage making ahead of me 😅. Hobby craft basic acrylic paint is a cheaper option for dying the foam. I used an old food processor but mat switch to a grinder for finer foliage. One word of warning.... Memory foam doesn't work!

Looks great! I wonder if it's possible to do this for an N gauge layout as well 🤔

Fantastic video!! That’s gonna save me some money! Can we see the class 57 in the next video?

Brilliant and saves a fortune. Use old grimey kitchen pads for the real smell of the outdoors. Just kidding about that.

Maybe go to to town with the grinder and make it finer?

This is great Richard, how fine can it go?

Can you cut it down even smaller.

I'm thinking of doing a Z narrow gauge layout, and that plant scenery looks great. Your tunnel looks 1/10th to small to my eye, my friend. I'm just putting it out there,Sorry.

I model HO 1.87 looking for cars trains 1950 1960 my iayuot is small by1.10by1.10

Sorry I couldn't make it through this video as I couldn't hear what you were saying! Sad as I am genuinely interested in the content.

Great video as always, but can we lose the Beverly Hillbillies soundtrack, please? Soooo distracting!!

He clearly likes to eat.