Mailbox Color for Your Era

You’re about to add scenic detail to your layout. Perhaps a few lamp posts, fire hydrants and a mailbox on the street corner. But what color should that mailbox be?

Tree Construction Technique

Use anything that looks like a miniature tree of the scale, height, and species you want to model. I prefer sage brush twigs for larger deciduous trees like mature oaks and cottonwoods. For birches and smaller deciduous trees, I use pieces from a decorative broom I bought at a Ben Franklin craft store. You can, of course, use anything that looks like a tree, from yarrow and goldenrod weeds; to herb and tree roots; to manufactured cast metal and plastic armatures.

Building A Trestle Span

Recently, I decided to add a new canyon to my N-scale layout. The plan was to build three separate trestle spans across my new canyon, after I build my new canyon of course! This was my opportunity to create a steel sub-girder trestle 280 feet long and 75 feet tall, plus two main line trestle spans, 200 feet long and 50 feet tall! Not to mention the possibility of some deep-water scenery and maybe a chance to model a boat.