Wargaming Terrain Building Question

[Ambitiousmould]

How do I build train tracks from scratch?

I'm currently building a Bolt Action board based on the Battle of El Alamein. The buildings are coming along well, including the train station building and that little signpost with the barrels that's in that reasonably famous picture.

What I am stuck on, however, is how the bloody hell to get some tracks laid down. The only scale railway to go with Bolt Action (1/56) is S Scale, which is only available in the US so the limited availability plus the shipping plus the cost of currency conversion makes it too expensive by a long, long way.

TL;DR: How does one scratchbuild some 1/56 scale model railway for wargaming terrain.

Cheers.

 

[Albino Boo]

The line at El Alamein was narrow gauge, so use HO and cut out sleepers to make it look right. As a rough guess take 2 out of 3 sleepers out.

 

[Muspelheim]

Perhaps the plastic grid stuff that model kits come fastened in could work as rails in a pinch, as well. 1/56 sounds about close enough, at least with smaller kits.

Another trick you could do to limit the fuzz is to model the rail pieces so that it looks like the sand is covering the tracks, with a few bits of rail sticking out of the sand drift here and there. It still shows where the rail is, looks nice and desert-like and saves you some fiddling.

You might need quite a lot of sand, though. One way to get loads for free that I used a lot is to knick a bucketful from a playground, soak it in boiling water and let it dry out. Takes a while, but it's damn good on a budget. I've still got a sack of it lying around somewhere.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

Perhaps the plastic grid stuff that model kits come fastened in could work as rails in a pinch, as well. 1/56 sounds about close enough, at least with smaller kits.

I literally just threw away about 3 cubic metres of old Warhammer sprues, otherwise that would've been good.

Another trick you could do to limit the fuzz is to model the rail pieces so that it looks like the sand is covering the tracks, with a few bits of rail sticking out of the sand drift here and there. It still shows where the rail is, looks nice and desert-like and saves you some fiddling.

You might need quite a lot of sand, though. One way to get loads for free that I used a lot is to knick a bucketful from a playground, soak it in boiling water and let it dry out. Takes a while, but it's damn good on a budget. I've still got a sack of it lying around somewhere.

I still have a metric shit tonne of play sand I bought to texture the board left over (I bought a 5kg bag and used about 1-1.5kg to cover an 8x4 foot board), so that's a really nice idea. It could make it look interesting without having to make literally 16 feet of track.