How do you like to model your country road shoulders? Do you simply run you scenery material, i.e. ground foam etc. , right up to the pavement or do you have a favorite method of forming the shoulder? Pictures?
JaRRell
jacon12 wrote: How do you like to model your country road shoulders? Do you simply run you scenery material, i.e. ground foam etc. , right up to the pavement or do you have a favorite method of forming the shoulder? Pictures?JaRRell
Most of the secondary roads are done by first setting the scenery base. Most of the layout scenery is either plaster on wire screening of plastercloth on webbing. Many of the roadways are usually run on areas of a plywood base or cut foam. Once the basic landforms and road level or cuts have been done, the dyed plaster or Durhams water putty is troweled on. I like to use a cheap 3" putty knife.Pick a flexible enough one and the blade can be flexed to set the slight crown of the road. You can't play with the finishing too much as the plaster sets. A wipe or 2 with a wet paint brush and one last pass with the knife usually gives a nice finish. I don't worry about the edges much at this time. Once the plaster starts to set, a chisel or small hook scraper will clean it up. Many times ragged or broken appearance along the shoulder is desired. The final scenery, sand, gravel, combinations of dirt etc finish off the shoulders. This will give a very realistic secondary roadway or old drive or lot. The ground foam grasses, weed and clump folliage can be added to suit.
This is only the dyed plaster with trimmed edges. Still not completed. You can see that by plastering roadways after scenery the edges can be made to have burms, wash outs and broken asphalt.
Larger industrial areas done the same. This was screening troughout and plastered.
This is a terraced plywood base with foam contours, roadway dyed plaster directly on pink foam
Hope some of this helps.
Modeling B&O- Chessie Bob K. www.ssmrc.org
On some roads, particularly those with steep dropoffs, I like to use Pikestuff guardrails. I combine them with some WS fine ballast, applied just like on the tracks, to form a gravel shoulder with a guardrail. Sorry, this isn't a great picture, but the camera's out of town right now.
One package of Pikestuff guardrails makes about 7 inches. It comes in 4 sections, with different kinds of end plates. I found that I didn't have enough vertical supports, but the ones I had were twice as high as I needed, so I cut them in half and then had enough. For mine, I glued the pieces together with CA and then sprayed them with rattle-can silver paint, and followed up with some Dul-Coat.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
bogp40 wrote: jacon12 wrote: How do you like to model your country road shoulders? Do you simply run you scenery material, i.e. ground foam etc. , right up to the pavement or do you have a favorite method of forming the shoulder? Pictures?JaRRellMost of the secondary roads are done by first setting the scenery base. Most of the layout scenery is either plaster on wire screening of plastercloth on webbing. Many of the roadways are usually run on areas of a plywood base or cut foam. Once the basic landforms and road level or cuts have been done, the dyed plaster or Durhams water putty is troweled on. I like to use a cheap 3" putty knife.Pick a flexible enough one and the blade can be flexed to set the slight crown of the road. You can't play with the finishing too much as the plaster sets. A wipe or 2 with a wet paint brush and one last pass with the knife usually gives a nice finish. I don't worry about the edges much at this time. Once the plaster starts to set, a chisel or small hook scraper will clean it up. Many times ragged or broken appearance along the shoulder is desired. The final scenery, sand, gravel, combinations of dirt etc finish off the shoulders. This will give a very realistic secondary roadway or old drive or lot. The ground foam grasses, weed and clump folliage can be added to suit.This is only the dyed plaster with trimmed edges. Still not completed. You can see that by plastering roadways after scenery the edges can be made to have burms, wash outs and broken asphalt.
What do you dye the plaster with (I just know somebody will answer with plaster dye) ? And where do you get it ?
Engineer Jeff NS Nut Visit my layout at: http://www.thebinks.com/trains/
I like to use fine ballast to simulate gravel along the edge of the paved surface.
Once the road surface is in place and painted, I put the ballast down and then wet it with alcohol. I mix my glue with equal parts water and alcohol, it flows better then just water and glue mixed, and it dries rock hard.
As an alternative to armco on rural roads, I used small Evergreen H beams and drilled holes for quilting thread, to simulate cables. The picture below shows the finished product.
The H beams I used were the smallest available, .060". They look alittle large in N scale, but i like the final effect.
OK, somebody forgot to send me the memo about putting a P.I.E. truck in the pictures with the road shoulders. Sorry.
Thanks Bob, your layout looks great. Pictures always help. And it looks like you've got some railfans in that last shot down by the dirt/gravel road.
Jarrell
bogp40 wrote: jacon12 wrote: How do you like to model your country road shoulders? Do you simply run you scenery material, i.e. ground foam etc. , right up to the pavement or do you have a favorite method of forming the shoulder? Pictures?JaRRellMost of the secondary roads are done by first setting the scenery base. Most of the layout scenery is either plaster on wire screening of plastercloth on webbing. Many of the roadways are usually run on areas of a plywood base or cut foam. Once the basic landforms and road level or cuts have been done, the dyed plaster or Durhams water putty is troweled on. I like to use a cheap 3" putty knife.Pick a flexible enough one and the blade can be flexed to set the slight crown of the road. You can't play with the finishing too much as the plaster sets. A wipe or 2 with a wet paint brush and one last pass with the knife usually gives a nice finish. I don't worry about the edges much at this time. Once the plaster starts to set, a chisel or small hook scraper will clean it up. Many times ragged or broken appearance along the shoulder is desired. The final scenery, sand, gravel, combinations of dirt etc finish off the shoulders. This will give a very realistic secondary roadway or old drive or lot. The ground foam grasses, weed and clump folliage can be added to suit.This is only the dyed plaster with trimmed edges. Still not completed. You can see that by plastering roadways after scenery the edges can be made to have burms, wash outs and broken asphalt.Larger industrial areas done the same. This was screening troughout and plastered.This is a terraced plywood base with foam contours, roadway dyed plaster directly on pink foamHope some of this helps.
thanks for the guardrail idea, Mr. B. I have just the spot for some of those.
And that hill in the background, beside the road looks good too. Is that covered with ground goop?
mls1621 wrote: I like to use fine ballast to simulate gravel along the edge of the paved surface.Once the road surface is in place and painted, I put the ballast down and then wet it with alcohol. I mix my glue with equal parts water and alcohol, it flows better then just water and glue mixed, and it dries rock hard.As an alternative to armco on rural roads, I used small Evergreen H beams and drilled holes for quilting thread, to simulate cables. The picture below shows the finished product.The H beams I used were the smallest available, .060". They look alittle large in N scale, but i like the final effect.
Jarrell,
The ground cover is Woodland Scenics fine ground foam over Sculptamold.
Here's another view of that bridge.
And there's that pesky P-I-E truck again.
jbinkley60 wrote: bogp40 wrote: jacon12 wrote: How do you like to model your country road shoulders? Do you simply run you scenery material, i.e. ground foam etc. , right up to the pavement or do you have a favorite method of forming the shoulder? Pictures?JaRRellMost of the secondary roads are done by first setting the scenery base. Most of the layout scenery is either plaster on wire screening of plastercloth on webbing. Many of the roadways are usually run on areas of a plywood base or cut foam. Once the basic landforms and road level or cuts have been done, the dyed plaster or Durhams water putty is troweled on. I like to use a cheap 3" putty knife.Pick a flexible enough one and the blade can be flexed to set the slight crown of the road. You can't play with the finishing too much as the plaster sets. A wipe or 2 with a wet paint brush and one last pass with the knife usually gives a nice finish. I don't worry about the edges much at this time. Once the plaster starts to set, a chisel or small hook scraper will clean it up. Many times ragged or broken appearance along the shoulder is desired. The final scenery, sand, gravel, combinations of dirt etc finish off the shoulders. This will give a very realistic secondary roadway or old drive or lot. The ground foam grasses, weed and clump folliage can be added to suit.This is only the dyed plaster with trimmed edges. Still not completed. You can see that by plastering roadways after scenery the edges can be made to have burms, wash outs and broken asphalt.What do you dye the plaster with (I just know somebody will answer with plaster dye) ? And where do you get it ?
The plaster is colored with powdered masonry dyes. They come in a wide range of colors, but black, brown, yellow and green are used the most. Most masonry, sand and gravel, and concrete suppliers will generally carry the dye. It's primary use is for coloring concrete and morter. It has no affect on the overall qualities of the plaster (hardness, drying and bond).
To mix you add the powder to the dry plaster. mix and this will be the approximate final dried color. Always add the dry plaster mix to water not water to plaster. Especially if using hydrocal, the time required to remove the lumps will lessen your working time and you either have a lumpy bad mix or it starts to set before your done.