Jury duty was a half day yesterday and nothing for today (and it's cancelled tomorrow and my duty is over) so I was able to get to work on the city streets. I came to the conclusion that the reason for delaying street installation — all the sloppy plaster work would destroy them — is no longer valid, AND in order to properly build the transitions between the city foam base and the layout surface the streets need to be in place. Before I could install them, I had to decorate them. There's no way to get into that scene, crawling around on the platform to line them, paint and weather them. This had to be done with the streets in their non-attached mode.
Since the surface is white, 4-ply, Bristol Board I felt that I didn't need to paint the lines white (this is a 1950's-ish layout so yellow traffic lines weren't used much). Instead I just needed to mask the area and paint the road. I used the narrow, flexible 3M blue pin stripping tape which is just about right size for an O'scale traffic line. For the stop lines at train tracks and intersections I used 2 pieces of thin Tamiya masking tape overlapped about 1/8".
I brush painted the road surface with a medium dark gray acrylic that was a mixture of white and black using low cost tube artist acrylics. Unfortunately, I didn't make this a scientific mixture and when I ran out and had to mix another batch, it was darker than the first one. I got more control of this and was able to match subsequent batches better. It took more than one coat to get an even coating.
When dry, it was a very smooth and flat finish. After pulling off the tape there were a couple of spots that needed touch up. Here's after the tape was pulled.
I had made a stencil for the XING text that would go in front of the grade crossing. I used a Henkel tape roller that has a non-permanent adhesive like 3M Postit on the stencil's back to hold it down for airbrushing. After spraying the stencil with Tamiya flat white with 50:50 Isoropyl alcohol overspray was a problem around the letter "I" and "N". To fix this up, I carefully remasked the lettering and touched up the gray with a fine brush — again having to custom mix a batch that matched.
After all touch up was complete, I airbrushed a light misting of weathered black down the center of all the driving lanes.
There's still more weathering to be done, but I'm not quite sure what to do. The road looks too pristine. I've ordered resin sewer inlets and grate castings from Les Lewis' Westport Model Works. I've also have the home-made man hole covers to install. Around the manholes and sewers I'll probably simulate patches. I can also color some areas that were repaved or repaired. Any other suggestions?
I temporarily placed some of the streets on the layout to see how it all looks. Interesting!
In looking at this view I realize my traffic stop lines are too close to the pedestrian crosswalks, but we're allowed selective compression in O'gauge and this is one of those instances. Besides, I don't feel like repainting, masking and weathering any more.
With jury duty complete, I will continue with the roads tomorrow, and get back to work on the train station. The train station has a flamboyant chimney being 3/4" square in O'scale. I'm going to use Les Lewis' "brick by brick" build method. It should look good. I asked and Les responded that he uses Evergreen #123 strip for the bricks. This is a .020 thick X .060 wide" strip. Bricks are 8" X 3.5" which is close to the correct width. While not as extravagant as Les' entire buildings done this way, it will make an interesting chimney.
The chimney has relief which means building a back layer than a second layer on top. In the original HO article, the author used Holgate and Reynolds brick paper. I don't believe this is available in our scale. This model is going to sit right up front in the layout and deserves to have nice details.
