How I Made My Brick Walls

The first retaining walls I built for the CVRR were made to simulate bricks and I have 2 places on my layout which utilize these types of walls. 

To build these walls I first made a rubber mold of a pre-formed styrene brick pattern wall.  Then I used that mold to cast my plaster walls.  When taking the pictures of the mold for this blog I was unable to locate the plastic piece I made the mold from.  I did, however, find the mold itself and it is shown below.  It is not quite visible the photo but there is a small brick pattern in the bottom of the mold.  I built the sides of up to about 1/4" so that I can make forms that are at most that thick and are not likely to break while handling them.  It will make a form about 2" x 4".

Since the mold was taller than the walls I wanted I cut a piece of balsa wood to act as a divider.  By using it I was actually able to make 2 wall sections with each pour.

I mixed a little Plaster of Paris and poured into both sides and waited for it to harden.  In the following picture you can see the fronts and backs of my first 4 wall sections. 

A closer-up shot shows the brick pattern.

The first retaining wall was to be placed along the backside of my car repair building.  The ground sloped down and did not allow enough room for a roadway behind the building so constructing a retaining wall here was a good thing.  The pencil lines are rough indicators of where I wanted the road and, thus, where the wall to be.

I took 2 of wall sections and attached them side-by-side to form one long wall.  Sorry I do not have pictures of how I did this part so I will have to just use words to describe it...I laid 2 wall sections next to each other, end-to-end, and 'glued' them together with a glob of plaster on the inside of the wall (the part that will not be visible).  Then on one end of the long wall and the adjacent end of a short wall I mitered an angle so that they would meet as shown below.

Everything was good so I then attached the 2 mitered pieces together.  I held the long wall in place with a C-clamp and positioned the shorter wall in place with a block of wood.  This kept the 2 wall sections in place so that I could glob up the joint with plaster.

I know those of you 'experienced' people out there are thinking to yourselves, "...just be sure not to tighten that C-clamp too much because you might break the long piece."   All I can respond with is "yup"...enough said about that.

I painted my bricks red using a dry-brush technique.

If you look closely in the following picture, right in the middle of the middle section you can see a vertical crack.  Yea, that thing about clamping too tightly...well, I fixed that the same way I attached the sections to each other - a glob of plaster on the back.

So after painting the red in varying amounts I sprayed it with a mixture of India Ink and isopropyl alcohol I get what is shown below.

Time to do the second wall. This one runs the length of Smittie's Junk Yard and Rail Salvage.  The process is the same as before.

I then used Sculptamold to build the ground in and around the walls.

I will use scenery to cover the joints where each wall section was attached to the next one.  Below is a picture of the first all after the Sculptamold was painted brown and some ground scenery has been added.

I will add more pictures as progress is made so please check back.