Need ideas for a truck loading building parking lot with a good concrete apperance. I have all the colored granular stuff for gluing but can’t find anything realistic in sheets (IE Walters)
Thanks
I have a large truck lot that services a rail transfer building. The base of my layout at that location is luan plywood. I just painted it a concrete color using acrylic craft paint. Then I drew some expansion joint lines using a very fine sharpie. Next I am going to paint some irregular shapes along the lines and sprinkle on some fine ground foam to simulate weeds in/along the cracks. You could use sheet plastic (styrene) for the basic parking lot surface, paint it, add the lines, and add any texture that you want to.
Likewise. On my last layout I had a good sized parking lot that was concrete. I used a peice of plastic, scored some lines with a hobby blade. A little sanding. Added the the color and some good weathering made all the diference. I think to extent anything would work. Concrete is rather smooth in person so modeling it with anything that had texture on it I think doesnt look good in the model world.
"Concrete is rather smooth in person so modeling it with anything that had texture on it I think doesnt look good in the model world"
I agree. Painted plaster or water putty would work, as would a host of other things including card, styrene sheet and MDF.
Mike
I purchased concrete paving material form Arizona Rock & Mineral and it worked very well, but the whole time I am working with it I can’t get over how much it feels and looks like real concrete. Well thats because it is real concrete. I didn’t go as far as sending it to a lab or anything like that but asked a few guys what was in bowl A and bowl B one had Az.R&M concrete and the other straight Portland cement. you couldn’t tell the difference. So I had to build a large truck lot for an industry on the club layout so I layed out a layer of straight white glue and then dusted sifted Portland cement over the entire lot. I used a pallet knife form the craft store as a concrete float. I came out far better then i had ever expected it to. I picked up a similar use form Ken McCorry when visiting his Keystone layout he builds a lot of structures and such out of foam core board. He paints then with latex paintand while the paint is still wet he sits Portland cement on to them and the effect is out standing.
The “concrete” sidewalks in this picture are plain sheet styrene, painted with cheap gray acrylic paint. The expansion lines are applied with a number 2 pencil. The “asphalt” roadway is made with Durhams Water Putty, painted a slightly darker shade of gray.
This “concrete” platform is a hydrocal casting.
I made a latex mold from an Evergreen styrene sheet with the grid pattern on it, and then made hydrocal castings from that. The fine-grained hydrocal looks very realistic as concrete. I just sprayed it with flat gray primer, and weathered it a bit with India Ink. For your parking lot, you could build wood forms to contain the edges, just the way the prototype is done, and pour a thin hydrocal sheet in place. Use sanding screen (in the drywall department of your hardware store) to smooth the surface. If you can do this off-layout, you can still take it outside and spray it with primer. Otherwise, you probably want to brush on a thin wash of gray until you get the color you want.