Southwest chief,I really like your work. That long yellow mobile home reminds me of an old movie with Lucille Ball.
I say the magic words “Selective Compression!” and my HO-scale streets all seem to end up 3 inches wide. I like a more cramped look, and I find that narrow roads tend to make my 2-4 story buildings look taller, and I get more of the “urban canyon” effect I’m looking for. Narrow sidewalks, too, help with that. I do pity those who can’t find anyplace to park, but my layout has subways, taxis, trolleys and buses, so there’s plenty of public transportation.
I draw the white lines with a gel pen and a ruler. This works very well, and if the edges get sloppy I can touch them up with a bit of acrylic craft paint. I always use a straight-from-the-container gray paint for stuff like this, rather than mixing my road surface color, so that I can go back and touch up spots without worrying about having to match the color again later.
I have parking meters from Hi-Tech Details. I got the silver ones, and painted red-over-white meter faces on them before installation. They’re a great little detail, and they “suggest” on-street parking even if there isn’t really room for it.
I added a small park with a statue, too.
I found the statue at the big Springfield train show, already mounted on its plinth. (Now, there’s a word you don’t hear very often.) I added the pigeons.
You know, I regret not having included a movie theatre on my main street. Every small town had one back in the day. Hmmm… maybe I can find room somewhere. Maybe if I cut main street down to 3 /2 inches, picking up another inch. I’d lose on-street parking… well, something else to think about.
Thanks for the photo!
Jarrell
Thanks for the tip on the gel pen!
The statue reminds me a little of a War Between The States general.
In the Fictitious History of Moose Bay, he’s John Buford Brad, a little-known businessman who retired as a Colonel from the Union Army. Earlier in his career, as a Major, he was ordered to Washington and court-martialed for profiteering, using his position to order haggis from the family sheep business back home. The court was so enraged that they busted him to private and ordered him to strip off his uniform right there in the courtroom. At that point, they looked at his long red underwear that his sisters had made for him, and realized that he had provided the solution to a serious problem - keeping the soldiers warm. Instead of the punishment they’d planned, he was promoted to Colonel and put in charge of “Union suits,” or “Long Johns” as they came to be known.
Thanks. The Long Long Trailer was my inspiration.
City Classics’ trailer is pretty close to the real one (1953 New Moon). Just wish someone made an HO scale 1953 Mercury Monterey.
Ohhhh… Union suits! That’s a good one. But, now I have to go look up ‘haggis’… [8-|]
I think I’ve seen the fun foam you’re talking about, I believe the ones I saw were black in color. What do you use to paint your center lines etc.? Are you building sidewalks also and if so what thickness are they? I’m not familiar with the foam putty, is it easy to use and do you have to sand it a little to smooth it?
The Creatology Fun Foam is about 2mm thick, comes in 12" by 18" sheets in several different colors (including blacks and browns) and is priced around $1 each at Michael’s. I use Craftsmart Fine Line Paint Pens to create the roadway striping. I like the fact that painting the striping this way creates clean but not perfect stripes that reflect the “hand or stencil painted” look one would expect during the 1950’s (as opposed to the machine applied look one sees today).
I am using more .040" sheet styrene for my sidewalks. Sidewalk width varies with distance from the aisle (wider in the foreground - narrower in the background). Since my roadways are about 3mm thick (Fun Foam atop .040" styrene), I raise my sidewalks above the road edges by stacking two layers of Fun Foam under the styrene sidewalks. This results in a curb height of about 8 scale inches. I scribe expansion joints into the stryrene surface spaced about 10 scale feet apart. I also scribe a curb line about 6 scale inches from the street edge of the sidewalks. I made a great scribing tool by sharpening one jaw of an old vernier caliper. I adjust the space between the jaws to the dimension I want between the scribe line and the edge of the styrene, then lock the jaws in place using the thumb-wheel lock. I then place the unsharpened caliper jaw against the edge of the styrene, then slide the caliper along the edge of the styrene while applying a little pressure against the surface of the styrene with the sharpened caliper jaw. The sharpened caliper jaw c
Hornblower, what a wealth of information. I will have to print it out so that I can study it at leisure.
Yes, maybe one day you can post a few photos of this. I know it must look super I hope you can locate the large sheets of styrene, buying it in the small packages gets a bit expensive. And, with the larger size you can cut out longer roadways and not have as many joints/seams.
…
Ohhhh… Union suits! That’s a good one. But, now I have to go look up ‘haggis’…
Haggis should be found in Websters right next to disgusting. [+o(]
Chief, That’s the movie I was thinking of.
Haggis should be found in Websters right next to disgusting.
The street on the right is 3 inches wide, while the one in the foreground is only 2 1/2 inches wide. I just ran out of space on that one. The sidewalk grid is 1/2 inch.
The House of Haggis sits on the corner of Penny Lane and Lonely Street, just across from the Heartbreak Hotel. At one time, the locals knew it as the finest restaurant in town, until a second restaurant opened up.
American Model Builders made the fire hydrant. It’s a nice metal casting with good detail.
Jacon, there is an architect(s) ruler that has one raised edge which makes it easier to not have your street lines bleed or vary (with practice). Especially with paint pens rather than ink but same otherwise.
Your street width in the pic looks fine to me for a narrow road if you needed to allow room for the park.
South West Chief, extremely ice work and inspiring for me. Mr. Beasley too. I loved your Union story!
Guys I have a STREETLINES QUESTION: (I’ve posted this Q. on the prototype forum too)…
At what point did street lines in large towns/small cities become almost universal? I’m modeling the mid 1940s but I was very surprised to see photos of New York City (Lexington Ave. in John Pryke’s “Building City Scenery” and other streets with no lines at all.
I’m currently mulling over whether or not to bother with lines on my dead end/cul de sac street scene. It’s adjacent to/incorporates a parking lot for the small depot so it may look fine without lines…
Thanks! Jim
I finally figured out how to post photos so before I forget, here’s a shot showing a portion of my “Fun Foam” over styrene sheet roads. I’ve done more work on this scene since this shot was taken so it looks a bit different now. The cardstock building on the far right has been replaced by the final styrene structure, the track has been ballasted, caulking has been applied and shaped to form the curb faces and gutters and the sidewalks, curbs and gutters have been painted. I guess I’ll have to take a few more photos now that I know how to share them.
That looks really nice Hornblower. I like the Simpsons reference [;)]
Horn, nice work - wish I would known about that fun foam stuff before I started on my town scene. I like how you have that spur track going across the street.
I have a few pics of the town scene on my previous layout. Since it was an ‘island’ type rather than around-the-walls, I was able to get photos of both the front and rear walls of the shop buildings. This represented a steel mill town, so my scene wasn’t very “gentrified” - no monuments or manicured city parks. Instead, it was more like a hardscrabble “strip” with bars and cheap restauants, plus a barber shop, drug store and union hall. The streets are the Walthers cornerstone ‘concrete’ sections (including sidewalks), spraypainted with a flat beige-colored paint from Wally World. I wanted to replicate the residue of exhaust carbon and tire rubber left by vehicles to make the road surfaces look more believable.
Here is a view of River Ave. (main street) showing all the taverns and food joints where the mill workers liked to hang out after the end of each 8-hour shift. The street ends at a gate into the steel mill (blue shacks). The areas without weathering represent recently-poured concrete. The surface in the left corner that looks like a parking lot is actually a temporary cover over the aisle, placed there for the duration of the photo shoot.
The side street intersecting River Avenue is plain sheet styrene painted gray to look like sun-bleached asphalt. I had to bend it slightly to mat
Fabulous work and great detailing. I’m amazed at how much the telephone poles, traffic signals and street signs add to the look of your layout. I especially love the weeds growing between the concrete slabs of the abandoned gas station. I’d love to see more of your work!
how wide, in inches, did you make it’s main street?
Did you try to be prototypical or fudge a little to make things fit the space?
Nowhere close to prototypical. The whole town would be consumed by the street.
Room for parking on both sides or only one? Or, none at all?
only one.
Did you install/paint center lines, traffic lanes, parking spots etc and how?
No, that only makes it look smaller. The cars mark the lanes.
Fantastic work everyone!!! This is easily one of the best street/road pics thread I’ve ever seen anywhere. I hope we get a lot more examples of folk’s streets! It’s a much discussed but relatively non de-piced subject and the weathering examples here are lst rate inspirations.
I picked up my street /sidewalk details (garbage cans,mailbox, street lamps, benches, etc.) yesterday on my way to an Ops session. Can’t wait to dig in on my lst styrene street scene. It was also my lst scratch build, styrene snapping project ever so it seemed like the easiest place to practice.