I'm looking to model some street trackage on my N scale layout and was wondering what the best way to accomplish this would be. I don't plan on anything fancy, just a single spur running in a street. There will be nothing such as turnouts or diamonds located in the street to contend with. What's the easiest way to model this in N scale? I'm looking at maybe a foot and a half to two feet of trackage in the street. Thanks for the help!
Check out these photos from Brooklyn's abandoned Jay St. Connecting Railway. They aren't model photos but might inspire you to branch off a bit into unusual places! http://www.oldnyc.com/jay_street_rr/contents/jay_street.html
Probably the easiest way would be to use plaster. Pour a slightly soupy mixture of plaster over the area and level it to the tops of the rail. After it starts to set up you can use an NMRA track guage to clean out the flangeways. HTH.....Mike
I've used plain old indoor wood filler for both paving roads and creating street trackage. Just smear on a thin coat for your pavement after setting the track into a recess on the layout, then smear the wood filler up to just barely below railhead level, then use a fingernail or X-acto to clean it off the flangeways, then just paint it all in your favorite pavement color, and scrape the paint off the railhead. It's worked on my switching layout well, but I've recently torn it up in preparation for a redesign. I'll still have some street trackage somewhere tho. Perhaps on the other side of my mainline.
I have done this on my Ntrak module and will do it eventually on my layout. I used different sizes of basswood strips on the outside against the rails to simulate cross tie sized pieces that border rails in some streets and on the inside with a flange gap. I colored the strips with a dark walnut colored felt tip marker that is used to repair furniture. I used grey poster board for the street and the paving between the rails and wood strips. I used a black fine point roller tip pen to draw the cracks, joints and repairs in the pavement. I weathered the whole thing with black and browns and an air brush. I have to say that it looks pretty good. I got many compliments at our club's setup at Christmas. Someday I need to figure out how to post pics here someday so I can let you all see some of this stuff. I got a lot of good ideas from the Pentrex video "Street Running".
I have heard of placing individual rail stock on its side in the street paving material. This provides the effect of a rail with a metal flange slot and pavement dam opposite the rail head which was quite common with city trolley tracks. Obviously any switches or complex trackage would have to be fabricated from individual rail stock. The trackage would have to be pre-formed and mounted on printed circuit board strips or individual ties before being placed on the roadbed and having the street paving material poured and formed around it. Another technique you might consider is to get a 3 foot piece of Z-Scale track, or ME Code-40 and strip the ties off the rails. Then take each individual rail and form it against the inside of the standard N-Scale rails in the area where you will pour the paving material. This would create the same effect as the pavement dam of the trolley tracks. [ 04 February 2002, 02:53: Message edited by: Hank Coolidge ]
