I am looking for some ideas for striping the roadways and rr crossings on my ho layout. Should I use paint or tape?
There are decals available from a few sources like Kadee http://kadee.com/htmbord/decals.htm . You can also get stencils from S&S for painting crossing areas and such http://www.walthers.com/exec/search?manu=643&category=Signals&split=30 .
I know there are people who like using tape, but to me it always looks just like tape. The texture doesn’t scale down, and the end result is striping that’s several scale inches thick.
I use a white gel pen.
It goes on easily with just a ruler for guidance, or a French curve if you’re doing curved roads. If I get sloppy, I can touch up the road with the same gray paint I used to paint it originally.
Line O Tape.com has all colors of tape in scale sizes.
I used automotive pinstriping on my road here.
I like to use the yellow frog tape cut the tape in strips the width you want for your stripes and then paint on your road yellow or white in the areas that you want your stripping, once you paint then put down your tape where you want your stripes to go. After that then paint your road the color you want it. Once everything is dry peel your strips of tape up and wa la you have road stripes. I know it sounds like a lot of work but the end result I think is very good. Tape looks a little too dense, and unreal I think. Stripes aren’t perfect in real life.
That pin stripping looks really good. My question is how do you make it stick on the hydrocal roads? I have tried automotive pin stripping and had not much luck.
Thanks. I painted it first. With a water based polyscale light grey. Then the pinstriping sticks to the paint. After that I weathered it using powders.