Painting stripes on city streets

[jbu50]

Hi guys

 Want to get soem ideas from others on your best way to add nice, clean, straight stripes to your city streets. One way that I have used, when I use styrene, was to mask the areas that I wanted to stay white with very thin chartpak tape....then spray the road surface color and remove the mask..voila..white stripes....that may be the best way, maybe not. But I was hoping to solicit some other ideas from the great minds here!

Thanks

John

[Mark R.]

That's a pretty slick method of creating stripes ! 

I use professional grade pinstripers tape for all my line-work. It's thinner and and the backing is a lot more aggressive than the cheap stuff you get at the discount auto stores. It's about 1/16" wide and works well for me. Here's a well used picture that shows a bit of my road-work ....

Mark.

[skiloff]

I'm in awe every time I see that picture, Mark.  That is absolutely fantastic.  Where would you buy that stuff?

[Mark R.]

Thanks - I really should at least take some new pix to post ! 

You should be able to find professional grade pin-striping tape at the high-end auto body supply shops .... the suppliers body shops get their products from. You'll also recognize it by the price - I think I paid around $17 each for the white and yellow as opposed to the $2.99 stuff at the discount auto supplier ! But on the same token, that scene is about eight years old and the tape is still stuck as good as the day I put it down.

Mark.  

[dknelson]

I was able to get a nice yellow tape that scales out to about 6" wide (HO) at my LHS -- but NOT in the train department, but in the art/craft area.  I think the plastic auto kit area may also have had it.  I carefully pressed it onto my weathered Walthers plastic street sections and it looked darn good to my eye, but to make sure it stayed put I coated it with matte medium to seal the edges and keep them from pulling up or leaving a seam.

Dave Nelson

[jbu50]

Seems like everyone likes the thin tape. I tried something new last night. I've been watching too many woodworking shows I guess, because I made a jig. I knew my streets were 4" wide. So I made a jig 5" wide with a 1/8" slot cut dead center. Thats about 6 scale inches. I added a couple of runners on the bottom on each side and slipped the entire jig over the road surface and sprayed white paint through the slot. The paint didn't cover 100% which is the affect I wanted. It came out sort of opaque, maybe about 90% covered so the road surface appeared to show through, giving it a weathered affect. Actually came out quite well, I think. Not sure if I'll stick with the jig or go back to the thin tape.

Nice road surface, Mark

John

[CSXDixieLine]

Sorry I don't have anything to contribute to the original question, but I had to comment about Mark's picture above. The first few times I scanned this thread, I thought it was just a railfanning photo that was part of your signature line. Then after reading the posts, I relized...it is a model! Whoa! May move to the top of my list of best model railroad scene ever. Jamie