Just recently I tried this brief experiment. I was ruminating on the possibility of a modular layout that would actually fit within the confines of my home, while doing so I considered the various methods for scenery construction, with a view towards the light and strong category. Naturally, fibreglass would be great, but there is no way I would be able to afford the quantity of resin required, not even the cheap resin! Thus I present to you, humble reader, an attempt to make a budget fibreglass substitute and test a few other materials along the way.

In the above you can see that I started with 3 simple landforms, just balled up newspaper. I covered 2 with chicken wire mesh and the third with cardboard strips hot glued together and stapled down at the edges. This wasn't corrugated cardboard though, which is the better, stiffer option. I didn't have any corrugated immediately to hand. I masking taped down the edges to tidy things up and stop mesh strands from cutting up my fingers!

Here I have covered the left hand 'burial mound' with paper towel strips wetted down with floor varnish (semi gloss). This didn't work very well, as the paper towels tended to hold their shape and not adhere to the wire, the varnish was not thick/tacky enough to stick them down effectively. The other two I have applied masking tape over half of each, testing how well the tape smooths out the form, which it does quite well. The tape seems to be a popular choice with US modellers, particularly when using the cardboard strip method. I believe it was popularised by Joe Fugate: http://siskiyou-railfan.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.26

While the paper towels didn't stick very well to the thin mesh wire, they did stick to each other very well. Also note, I used a non-water based varnish which has nasty fumes (I had to use a respirator) that I just happened to have spare. I would recommend the use of water based for actual layout construction. It is far less toxic and dries faster. Moving on.

Now I have applied toilet paper (unused!) to the other two forms. They also copped the varnish treatment. The toilet tissue is much better at conforming to the mesh shapes (also better than newspaper), so much so that it sinks through the holes a bit, exposing the mesh form underneath, as you can see on the left hand side of the middle form. It also stuck well to the cardboard strips on the right hand form. Unfortunately, the masking tape I used to cover half the shapes is a bit shiny/waxy, which made the tissue slide about. However, once dry it is certainly well stuck to the tape. All of these forms had already gained a surprising amount of rigidity at this stage.

At this stage I had decided to not do anymore work to the paper towel covered form. For the remaining two, I covered one with an old hanky, again soaked in varnish. The other got a varnish soaked old sock. Generally they conformed to the shapes and adhered to the layer of toilet paper beneath very well. Once dry they are both reasonably stiff, resisting bending but not totally rigid. The cardboard strip form was actually stiffer than the mesh one but only on top where several strips intersected.

Finally, I added one more sock (note to self: buy more socks) to the middle form. This has made it remarkably stiff, yet it still retains some flexibility.

Conclusion

I will probably use the mesh-with-fabric based approach for my next layout, since I intend to have open frames. I may try back filling the underside of the hills with expanding foam from a can, just to give it some more support and give the trees something to be planted in to. The cardboard strip-with-fabric method is also quite good, it would no doubt be better if I had used corrugated strips. You could probably use an entirely paper based approach and still acheive a good result. I expect the paper towels would adhere much better to the tissue/masking tape layer than the wire mesh, thus giving that extra thickness and fibre for the varnish to soak through. Just using toilet tissue would get laborious though, it was quite slow to apply.

The 'sticking point' it seems is getting the initial layer of material (fabric or otherwise) to stick to the sub-former material. A possibility is to use a contact adhesive like Ados F2 or some other 'tacky' glue to get that initial layer down. The masking tape approach is also quite good, if you can find a more absorbent tape, though you would use a lot on even a moderate layout. The use of finer mesh, like fly-screen mesh may improve the adhesion too.

Of course, if you feel wealthy or can find a cheap, bulk supply of resin, one could merrily use conventional fibreglass mat and have a very strong, rigid shell for your scenery. This has only been a proof of concept as they apply to portable layouts. To my mind, for permanent layouts, the plaster/hydocal + gauze method (or similar) is more than adequate. For those of you who have been gently dozing, you can wake up now, this post is actually over.