I am building my road for my town and it has to rise up 2 inches, what would be the best way to get the rise, should i carve some foam?
Over thirty years of paving streets in HO I’ve tried everything, even scalecrete, cardboard, 3X5 index cards, poster board; but my two favorites are wall mud and the foam trays your steaks come in from the grocery store. You can even use Woodland Scenic’s foam risers for track for your roads. I’ve even used AMI’s instant roadbed.
The wallmud is smooth and spreads like butter, remember when it drys it may crack if you spread it to thick. On a recent road I just dropped a spatula full smoothed it out for 3 feet with a gentle rise to about two inches. It was fun, when it dried I sanded it filled in the cracks and painted it concrete, a true construction project, even set up diorama’s with construction crews and road equipment for realism.
The foam trays for your meat are great to use. You can cut them in any configuration, use scrap pieces as risers, glue the pieces, then paint it concrete, tar, or just a road colors. If you want texture, use Woodland Scenic’s fine scale ballast, or my favorite, fine powdered dust from the streets in your neighborhood were cars have driven over the roads creating a wonderful ballast. Remember, if you use road dust for track ballast make sure you de-magnatize it first, it could play havoc with you engines.
This, along with scenery, is one of my favorite parts of model railroading. I love long roads with curves and hills. I really adds to the realism of an HO or any scale railroad.
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Thanks for the info, that is some great advice.
Wallmud?
Is this drywall plaster?
In any case, sounds like an option worth checking out. I’ve seen modelers use carboard for streets and the results that I’ve seen, IMHO, weren’t very hot.
I’ve noticed that layouts where “paste like” type materials are used for streets or roads, seem to look very realistic, especially with cracks cut in. Woodland Scenics makes a material for roads but ordinary hardware store materials like plaster, tile filler and drywall compound seem to work as well. Results depend on how smoothly the material is layed down. Thin coats are the rule of thumb.
I still would like to experiment with sheet styrene for city streets as well as paste compounds. With an airbrush and varying shades of gray colors, styrene can easily be made to look realistic. [:D][;)]
Cheers.
I’m a big fan of spackling compound for roads. It’s super easy to use and shape. I have used Woodland Scenic’s Pave it and it’s pretty nice too. Like Robert, I have tried a bunch of techniques to do roads but I like the spackle the best. My next favorite is sheet sytrene for concrete roads. It’s easy to use and when painted looks very nice.