Just a few Hints & Tips  

One of the best ways I found to light-up structures and also be able to remove the structure was to use brass strip, the flexible kind. Used mainly for contact wipers on loco's

The way I do it is to first of all get all the 12volt grain of wheat bulbs I need for one structure and hide them in the roof.

The wires are then all brought back to one area and fed down the side of the structure. In the case of the sawmill, I had to use the rear leg. Once the wires are fed through, you glue (Contact adhesive)  them either side of a square piece of wood, solder on the brass strips and open the brass strips out. 

Next stage is to mark on the baseboard the position of the brass strips (Note I made two black lines) and drill two holes through the baseboard. These holes will have to be wider than your brass strips on the structure to enable it to press down on the brass strips on the baseboard.

 Two further brass strips are needed  to make contact with the two already in place. These will also have to be bent over. Now, feed down  two wires which are going to be used for the 12volt supply to the bulbs and solder to the two bent brass strips. These are now glued in place. Just use Contact adhesive once again, and leave it to dry for around 1 hour. There is plenty of latitude between the brass strips on the structure and brass strips on the baseboard so precise placement is not to critical.   

Now its easy to lift a structure for cleaning it or any repairs/alterations/ or new bulb needed, just simply put it back in the same place and switch on the structure light. 

If you are going to make a nice looking town with roads, try and place it  so they are angled to any tracks that are near them, this gives the illusion of depth to the layout, also has greater appeal to the viewing public, and the camera, when taking photo’s later. Here's one of my N-scale layouts done this way.

Here's another from an old HO layout of mine, note also the use of cutout back scenes at the rear of the town, these were cut from a "Walthers" catalogue and pasted to the wall, giving the illusion of depth to the roadway.

When doing any Scenics close to your track work, it is advisable to apply masking tape over the tracks to protect them from any glues that are used.  Always do this when applying plaster of any kind, or using plaster impregnated cloths.

Lichen to my mind is far too bright in its colouring when first bought, I was told many years ago to put it outside in the sunlight to fade it, yep, it works, and really looks nice afterwards.

I am for ever making trees for my layout and came across a very good method of creating bark, and that is to use a razor saw and score deep into the balsa trunk. I have always used a rasp to achieve the same thing, and twisted the trunk as I rasp down the trunk, but it’s always nice to have another alternative.

Well my friends, I hope you have enjoyed this CD as much as I did putting it all together. Model Railroading is one of the hobbies that is carried forward from childhood to Grand parenthood. The learning curve never stops, I can attest to that as I learnt some new tricks on modelling not too long ago, and I am now 66 years young.

For your enjoyment I have placed my Cooncreek & Tumbleweed Springs 0n30 website below, if you are on the internet,  just click on the logo.

Thank you.

Paul Templar