Railway sleeper walls

 Something you often come across on industrial sites or farms is the "railway sleeper" wall.

Railway sleeper wall.

 They are usually used as retaining walls to contain something such as manure, crops (potatoes, turnips etc), or on an industrial site it could be aggregate or stone chippings.

Railway sleeper wall.

 I passed this one just at the side of the road, along the edge of some concrete hard standing.  I thought I'd get some photographs for reference.

Railway sleeper wall.

The wall is made by setting universal columns ("H-beams" or "I-beams") upright in concrete and sliding wooden planks down between the flanges.

Planks between the flanges.

 Railway sleepers tend to be the ideal size and are sturdy, often treated to resist rotting, and frequently cheap and available in large quantities.

I-beam detail. Very rusty!

I have a range of old girders, supports and beams from Plastruct and other companies, some old grey ones happened to be exactly the right size to use with coffee-stirrers.  All I needed next was a few scraps of Foamex that could be trimmed to the right length and cut into an irreguar shape along the sides.

Basic materials.

Some stirrers turned out to slightly thicker than others, so the first task was to sort out those of the correct thickness to fit into the girders.

Testing the fit.

 Once this was worked out, I had to determine out the most efficient use in terms of length of plank and height of wall.

Working out the lengths and heights.

 This was also an opportunity to try out my new bit of kit, the multi-angle cutter. This uses a stanley knife blade (or utility knife blade) which fits into the cutter and cuts against a metal anvil.  The anvil has a useful set of guides for cutting at different angles.

Multi-angle cutter.

The panels were glued together using a mixture of gel and liquid superglues (cyanoacrylates).

Finished fences.

Bases were finished with a smear of brown acrylic caulk followed by some soil & brown tile grout.

Finished fences with 15mm scale volunteers.

Statis grass and small shreds of foam were added in for a suitable unkempt look.  They were sealed in place with some dilute PVA dripped on from a pipette.

Vegetation/basing detail.

The steel uprights were painted burnt umber, then dabbed with a patchy burnt sienna.

Vegetation/basing detail.

Wooden panels were taupe, washed with thinned down green paint along the edges to simulate algae growing where the wood will have been damp.

Vegetation/basing detail.

A drybrush of the original taupe helped soften the green patches and I finished off with a bone-coloured drybrush for the highlights.

Vegetation/basing detail.

These fencing panels can be used in any of my modern games and will also be OK for sci-fi games.  They may not have timber railway sleepers in the far future, but there should be local trees that can be cut down and trimmed to size in order to quickly and easily assemble retaining walls like this.

Vegetation/basing detail.

I only had enough for the 3 panels. I did wonder whether I should have reduced the height by 50% and made double the length of walls, but ended up sticking with them as they were.  They'll provide cover to tanks and small mecha at this size, and I could always use them for a 28-32mm game too.

H-beam detail.

They've turned out pretty well and at the cost of only a few pence each, match my cheapskate aesthetic very well!

Vegetation/basing detail.