I've used gray 1/4 inch foamboard for the concrete highways on my N-scale layout. State highway beside Hillery Yard Hillery Road by Yard by ppuinn posted Jan 13, 2014 at 9:57 PM Interstate 474 Overpass by Whitehouse Crossing Hillards, I-474 Overpass, Whitehouse Crossing by ppuinn posted Jan 27, 2015 at 4:16 AM Adams Street Used Cars Adams Street Businesses by ppuinn posted Feb 27, 2010 at 12:52 AM Adams Street Viaduct CNW Adams Street Viaduct by ppuinn posted Feb 27, 2010 at 12:52 AM Rte 29 Auto Row When the lane striping on Adams Street turned out too wide and crooked, I started doing lane striping on the other highways with colored pencils. Tapering off the edge of the foamboard with a razor blade or Exacto knife lets the roads blend easily into ditches. Downside, the gray color is too uniform (IMO). Also, there are no concrete seams except where two pieces of foamboard meet (although I could have added them with a sharp pencil), no potholes, no crown in the middle of the road, no discoloration from rubber tires (but those could have been added with careful application of weathering chalks).
Dave, I use 1/32" (5" N-Scale) model airplane decal striping for my roads. It comes in white and yellow normally used for roads. It's shiny, but can be dulled with light brushing of Dullcoat or similar model paint.
Hank, I tried the airplane decal striping and Dullcoat on a previous layout and found them to work well for the white dashed lines to separate lanes going the same direction, but on my current layout, I've got 8 yards of 4 or 5 lane highways and interstates which require solid yellow and white lines, as well as dashed stripes...and getting that many yards of 1/32" decals was so expensive I tried the (too wide) paintpens, and finally settled on the colored pencils. Besides cost, two additional benefits to using the colored pencils: 1. In sharp contrast to the paintpens, the white and yellow pencils require numerous passes to adequately cover the gray of the foamboard. As a result, freehanding any curves or perfectly straight lines is MUCH easier than with paints because most mistakes are too faint to be seen and, if they can be seen, they are easily erased. 2. By using a very sharp point, I could force the perspective from the front to the back of a shelf by making the lines 1/32" wide at the fascia, but gradually thinner as they reached the back of the shelf. (Even with the fine point paintpens, I never developed sufficient skill or precision to produce uniformly tapering lines...but, someone with better skills/steadier hands than me might have better luck.)
Tomkat: Beautiful job of simulating the tar poured into the seams...That center line between the green car and red truck reminds me of the center line on US Route 6 near my grade school in Willoughby Hills, Ohio in the late 1950s: straight for some newer sections where there was no chipping, and then wider and more squiggly where chipping from expansion/contraction required more tar to fill in the gaps. Slightly off-topic, but of interest to me and maybe others: Are the speed limit and intersection signs printer ink on paper/card stock, or decals on very thin plastic? Love the subtle weathering on the reefers, too.
Amazing number of signs! Superb work on them and the very realistic road surfaces. Alan Curtis Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk
Hi Tomkat I should have the sign's before! I had do search them in the net and reduce them to N-Scale
