i am looking to make a concrete lot for my ethanol plant and was wondering if there is any tricks to make 1/16 poster board (white) look like a slab of concrete. do the ties chow above or below the concrete? is the concrete poured between the rails everywhere, or at places where the groundsman want trucks to travel? what disance should be between the inside of the rail and the concrete?
much thanks to anybody who responds
AK
Well, first, an article in the April 2008 MR, Scenery Step by Step, covers this topic in terms of modeling the concrete lot w/ embedded rails - Cody used stryene, painted aged concrete and weathered w/ black ink washes.
Ties should not be visible (at least in the prototype lots I have seen), rails should be even with the top of the pavement (although rails seem to often stick a bit above the level, causing a lovely bump and bang when driving over them) and concrete (or asphalt) areas would be designed to accomodate where trucks (or other vehicles) need to go - embedded rails can be more of a pain to maintain, so why pave around them if you don’t need to - on the other hand, most vehicles need pavement, so you need to plan around the vehicles’ workflow (loading docks, forklift loading, parking, delivery, etc.).
Note that relative to model flangeway requirements, the prototype flangeway is usually much narrower.
How about… automotive bondo?
Mix it up in a small batch, apply with a putty knife around designated area, and Presto!
On a club to which I once belonged, there was a need to imbed rails in a concrete street that ended up as a concrete-surfaced quay. The modeler who took on the project surfaced the street and quay with concrete.
Actually, he used Portland cement. He couldn’t find scale-size sand and gravel…
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I just finished building the Farmers Co Op Grain Elevator. I used aged concrete from Floquil for the foundation/ramps etc. and was’nt to thrilled with the color. To me it looks a little green, not really much like concrete at all. I would like to say that I really like Floquil paints, just not this particular one. I think that for aged concrete, a light sand color would be better, as the sun makes the concrete appear lighter and lighter with age. Just my opinion.
I wonder if it’s your lighting that doing it - I think the aged concrete color looks fine under standard incadenscent (although can be improved using those trolley modeler’s suggestion of a light overspray of dust etc) - I airbrushed this batch outdoors, so not sure if age concrete looks funky under standard flourescents (not CFL) - I do know that many greys look brownish to my eyes under standard flourescents, but look prefectly fine under incadenscents.
I used a table saw to cut two slots in 1/4" plywood to rail depth and correct rail spacing. Cut the plywood to the size of your plant, locate where you want the track to be located, cut the slots, glue and spike the rail in place, fill the crack on the outside of the rail with wood dough, sand smooth, paint paved area with floquel concrete. I used a router to do some curved areas, but thats another story.
I use styrene sheet painted with acrylic craft paint. I ran the stryene over the ties and just under the ball of the railhead.
Nick
My techinique is a bit different (and has a side effect).
I tape off the area I want to pave (with paving tape) and pur the hydrocal all over the rails and the area. I immedietly level it off with a straight edge. After the hydrocal has set, I take my NMRA gauge and use the flangeway end to carve out my flangeways. Works for me.
The side effect is that the rail is exactly at the height of the pavement. When it comes to cleaning the rail, you tend to scuff the pavement as well. This is cured by pre-pigmenting the hydrocal to be the color you want. You just need to make sure that you always clean the track in the direction of the train travel.
David B
David, a good idea.
I use plaster and a home made tool.
Wolfgang
Cody did it HO scale. But how would he have done it N or even Z scale? Frankly, I have often thought of doing it on my N-Scale layout but I can’t figure out how with causing problems since the flangeways need to be large enough not to cuase problems for the trains but narrow enough to be believable. And this would go great in my shipyard scene.
Irv
corsiar, perhaps you can color the ties/plate detail of the trackage to be paved over the color of the pavement (aged concrete, asphalt grey, new concrete, etc - assuming you are using flex track and not laying your own rails without ties). This may help disguise the width of the flangeway in N scale. How wide do the flangeways need to be, in relation to the inside distance between rails?
Check these guys out:
Apple Barrel craft paint has a color called “Sandstone” that’s looks really good for aged concrete. I agree with Dave about adding paint to your plaster before pouring it. I had one crossing I had to keep touching up every time I cleaned my track.
It’s a good question but the inside would need to be wide enough to accept the flanges of the wheels on my locomotives without either derailing them or making them lose electrical contact with the rails. Now this may not be much of a problem with my newer locomotives, but I still have 3 old Trix losos which I would like to run once in a while and I think those flanged wheels are not only deeper but wider as well.
The guys at the N-Trak club I belong to don’t fill in the center portions of crossings precisely for the reason that these center portions often cause derailments. But I have seen it done correctly and very convincingly in other scales.
Irv
Irv
I use plaster for my intermodel yard using 1/16" plastic strips for rail clearance.
That looks pretty neat, but just remember that proto87 has a shallow flangeway compared to standard HO, so you’ll have to be careful to make sure everything runs smoothly.