SCENERY
Viewing others layouts on YouTube showed that the best layouts have realistic scenery - thus the layout needed Grass, Trees, Buildings, Bridges etc to maximise race ‘fun’.
Buildings:
Used a genuine Scalextric cardboard model (control tower) and scanned all cardboard pieces.
Then used scans and cropped images etc to design grandstands, pit buildings etc in Powerpoint.
Printed out designs, glued to cardboard, cut and assembled into model buildings.
All buildings ‘slot’ into baseboard cardboard to hide bases/joins
Ground:
For realism, the track must be level with ground - thus 8mm thick cardboard was cut and glued each side of all track pieces.
Slopes and hills are glued cardboard ‘fins’ with crumpled newspaper between the fins. Slopes then coated with paper towels soaked in dilute PVA glue, dried and painted brown.
Then applied glue and dropped on grass fibres in a static field (so stand upright just like real grass does).
Ground Features:
Rocks were carved from insulation foam blocks roughly cut and glued in place which were then scored/cut with stanley knife to mimic rock faces and then painted and dry-brushed till look realistic.
Waterfalls use silicon sealant beads highlighted with white gloss paint for rough water.
River beds use gravel/cork granules glued then painted, poured resin is used for water with white gloss paint where need rough water.
Back-boards:
Thin ply painted blue for back-boards. Found trees and mountain photos online, then scaled them up/down, printed, cut-out, overlapped & glued to back-boards as background.
Trees and Bushes:
Was clear I would need a great many trees for realism so to keep costs down I made them using sisal string. First the string was cut into lengths, then the fibres were teased out and dyed (using different greens/dilutions). Dyed fibres were wound between mild steel wires (using cordless drill) to produce long 'bottle brushes' which were cut into different lengths and trimmed to fir tree shapes.
Holes were drilled in the layout and over 450 trees glued in place.
Bushes are dyed moss glued to layout in suitable locations
Other:
Barriers, spectators etc were bought on eBay at suitable scale and then painted and modified to suit.
Signs were printed and glued to backing before being fixing to painted dowelling and/or wood and then glued in place.
Brick and stone walls are online photographs printed out and glued to cardboard.
