Started cutting lots of green extruded foam making the main streets that run through the town. I drew up a section view to show how the various thickness stack up to make the streets, curbs and a foundation for all the structures.
That house on the drawing is a 1:48 scale drawing that I made of an old Mainline Modeler HO project. It's a lovely little house that works perfectly for my railroad, and it's a scratch build project I'll get to someday.
The stack gives about a 6" curb height which I like since most model railroad curbs tend to be too high.
I cut all the streets and got them positioned. Here's what it looks like.
Everything's working out as planned, but there are a number of grade crossings at curves and even over switches that are going to be a bear to build. You just can't throw a couple of stripwood planks down and call it a crossing. I'm going to take to Steve at Ross Custom Switches to see if there's any way he can help out. I'm especially concerned about creating good flange ways. If I come up with a good way to make a barrier for the flange way, I could use plaster and mold the grade crossing. I could also cut them out from balsa. In fact, as I'm writing this, I think that might be the best way to attack this challenge.
I'm also looking at these pictures and realized I wasted a lot of time beveling the underneath of the road pieces to nest into the ballast. It would have been much easier to just remove the ballast and sub-roadbed where the road approaches are. In fact. I'm going to go back and do that, and then add some new piece of foam to get very close to the track.
There are two streets converging on the train station. The station is raised on a piece of thin foam core, and some illustration board to bring it up the same height that the road. There will also be a parking lot next to the station.
The pieces of foam at glued together with the low-temp hot glue. On top of the foam go 4 ply Bristol Board that I just purchased at Michael's crafts. It was pricey. It cost as much as the foam. It will be adhered to the foam with 3M 77 spray adhesive. Then it will be painted and have line work painted on. I also want to install man hole covers, storm drains, potholes, and other street-like things.
