KidatHeart06That means an HO curb would be a little more than 1/16" in height. Seems a little small to me. And that also means, I think, that whatever I use for sidewalks, the parking lots, and under the buildings would need to be the same height.
If you want to go the paper/paint route, you might want to check out scalescenes.com a British company that does card stock buildings. They have a U.S. HO scale collection for streets and sidewalks. They use 0.08 in (2mm) card stock as the basis for the sidewalks. (Nice products but you are kind of stuck with the colors you get from your printer and their PDF files)
Co-owner of the proposed CT River Valley RR (HO scale) http://home.comcast.net/~docinct/CTRiverValleyRR/
Do a search in the forums. This came up months ago and there was one particular person who had a perfect way of making roads, They looked real. I do believe it was with some sort of plastur of paris type material. I like Madogs idea. They have a 9mm thick foam board version of pink foam commonly used for subroad bed and scenery base material. This could be used in rural areas to raise the road a bit and use the ends to help form the shoulder, a fine grade ballast would work. As for urban, just mix you ideas and Madogs. Paint the street right on foam scenery base, then get a sheet of .060-.080 sheet styrene, cut it to match the foot print of your given structure with the extra space for a curb, then glue your structure onto the styrene sheet. There's your curb. Just don't forget to carve some expansion lines in the side walks. I would imagine the structure and the sheet would be painted and weathered seperatley, then glued together and then glued as one piece onto the layout.
There was also one other method I remember being in MR, towards the begining of this year I do believe. The author made streets by taking pictures of the street he lived on, 'doctoring' them up a little bit in a photo shop software, then printing them out on decal paper.
Just painting the streets directly on the board will not give you the look you are aiming to achieve. Although, IMHO, the Walther´s stuff is pretty good, when laid out with care, there are alternatives to it. The most important questions you need to answer is, what type of covering you intend to model, concrete, asphalt, brick, cobblestones?
As for asphalt and concrete, you can use thin foam board, cut to shape, with the curbs made of a little thicker material. Any structure or texture you´d like to have, can be engraved - a tedious task, but the result is fantastic. For parking lots, which have a gravel surface, I just use fine sand (bird cage sand), coloured lightly with acrykic washes.
BTW, that curb height you mention is correct, but hardly visible...
Hi, I'm at the planning stage of laying out my town and adding streets,sidewalk,curbs, etc. I have a particle board base to build up from. My thoughts are as follows: Paint the streets directly on the board. Use styrene for the curbs and sidewalks. Use " ??? " for the parking lots, and under the buildings. I measured the curb in front of my house and it's 6". That means an HO curb would be a little more than 1/16" in height. Seems a little small to me. And that also means, I think, that whatever I use for sidewalks, the parking lots, and under the buildings would need to be the same height. Not sure where to go from here. I'm looking for comments/suggestions on my method. OR....something better :>) Don't really want to buy the Walthers stuff. Time frame is roughly 50's-60's. Thanks! George
Modeling the B&O in the 50-60's