Hardwood Floor Decal

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I’d like to add a hardwood floor to the interior of the Walthers 3 stall round house. Does anyone have a good source for a hardwood floor decal I can use? I’m afraid that strip wood will raise the floor too high and interfere with the locomotives.

2

You can print hardwood floor on paper or slightly thicker cardstock on your computer. That’s how I did this freight house:

I get floor and wall textures from

http://www.textures.com/

These are designed so that you can place them end-to-end and top-to-bottom and they form a smooth, continuous pattern. I download them and then import them to Microsoft Word, which lets me position and size them before printing.

After I print them, I cut them to size and shape and then glue them in with Aileen’s Tacky Glue, a craft store product. I like Aileens, particularly on cardstock, because it is thick and will not bleed through from the back and spoil the image on the front.

You can print the same textures on decal paper if you’d like (www.decalpaper.com) but they’re much more difficult to apply, and it’s harder to get the color balance right.

3

You can get some pretty thin strip wood, can’t see how a scale foot would interfere with anything.

4

Phil,

That’s what I did with my NYC freight house. IIRC, I used scale 1x12s and it visually worked well with the grain in the wood strips. I also stained them with thinned-down PS Railroad Tie Brown to bring out the wood grain and give the interior a warmer appearance.

Sorry I don’t have a closer shot of the strip wood flooring. [:(]

Tom

5

MisterBeasley,

Thank you for the link. Very useful site.

6

Great information! Thank You!

7

8

I’m with Mister Beasley on the textures.com site, been using it for years.

I might point out that many roundhouses in the 20th century would probably have an end grain wood block floor, if not poured concrete.

http://jennisonwright.com/woodblock.html

The wood block floor would absorb shock and be easier on the workers.

Here’s the floor of thePRR’s Mingo Junction roundhouse:

Of course the pits have been filled in but they were poured concrete as well.

Have fun, Ed