First module

[N-Osoi]

I'm making one. I have some leftover 9mm ply so I will use that as the base. I have cut some cardboard as pictured to the same size to help plan. Will have roads between the buildings and across the front.

 

What do people recommend to make a nice road? I saw some 2mm EVA foam sheets in a craft shop and they looked to have a good texture for roads/ground.... anyone painted them?

 

I have a few tomytec buildings so I will have spaces for them but won't fix them in place. I found a thread here that noted the differing floor heights - my three are a case in point, so I'll adjust their base height. I think I have some of the #00 screws on the way too. Not sure what to do next! The ply is cut and I have holes for the power feeds. I also note that the Kato catenary pole bases match the required T-track spacing! (33mm)

 

 

[Beaver]

1 hour ago, N-Osoi said:

What do people recommend to make a nice road?

 

Wet and dry paper is an excellent representation of fairly fresh tarmac in good condition, including the colour. Just shim it up to the desired level with scrap card and stick it down. Older tarmac faded to a paler colour with potholes, patches etc takes more work. I prefer to use Jarvis tarmac scatter, applied densely with a great deal of strong glue, which is then rubbed down with sandpaper after thoroughly hardening off. The colour and colour variation is just right and it naturally has convincing holes and cracks in it (the weaker the gluing, the more holes and cracks.)

 

Gravel or bare earth streets can be done with painted sandpaper for a smooth well maintained street or soil scatter treated as tarmac scatter above for one in poorer condition.

 

Which you need depends on era. Much of Japan had unsurfaced streets and roads well into the middle Showa period. For 1980s or later you can plausibly have tarmac everywhere.

[N-Osoi]

Oh that's a good idea. I'm basically trying to create contemporary Japan, so lots of tarmac, but I'm sure I'll have bits of gravel or dirt paths somewhere eventually.

 

Acrylic paints for the sandpaper?

[MeTheSwede]

Don't paint your roads black and you have automatically made better roads than most road modelling beginners. 😀

 

I think any texture on an N-scale road is likely to be out of scale and would say it is only of use if it helps with the process of applying a realistically looking paint cover. However I'm still pretty new with these things, so don't pay too much attention to what I'm saying.

 

 

 

[N-Osoi]

Yeah I just don't want it too shiny, or black, or looking like concrete. I'll try the wet and dry paper, and I think someone said you can use nail polish tape or buy thin art tape for road markings. Will experiment with the weathering and scatter @Beaver - any examples of the older tarmac anywhere?

 

What I'm trying for:

 

[Cat]

A slight bit of purple in the grey is the magic blend.

[cteno4]

@N-Osoi great you are starting on a Ttrak module!

 

Physical texture would be minuscule at scale, so best to just fake that with more visual patterning for roads. like others mentioned using something like 400 or 800 grit sandpaper will give that little feel of some texture.
 

another approach is to print your roads. This is nice as you can easily experiment with various designs easily and make small road lines easily. You add road details like drains and manhole covers as well as pot holes, cracks, blemishes, even the tire and oil lines on the roads if you want. You can easily play with colors you want as this may have to be slightly different than in pictures and your usual viewing distance is like 250-500’ scale away and colors can change at distances. Lighting also is usually much different on a layout (we had that this weekend at a show being at the center point between the big sodium lights and not only punky color bit everything dim and foggy looking) than prototype outdoor sunlight.

 

Print out on a drawing paper that has just a touch of texture and you will get a nice tiny bit of surface texture and help it not be shiny. Best to use an inkjet printer and not a laser printer as the laser printer’s fuser roll and the toner always ends up with a shiny smooth surface when you print larger areas like a road. 
 

I’ve really enjoyed doing the printed streets and works great on smaller bits like a Ttrak module. Let’s you play a lot with ideas. You can also use it just to lay out the design and then do it physically later.

 

if you do it physically there are decal sets for road lines out there or you can get pin tape to lay the roads down. 1/64” pin tape is about scale but hard to come by these days but you can find 0.5-0.7mm pin tape pretty easy as used in fingernail art a lot. Search on ebay.

 

of course you can get very detailed with Joe’s etched brass man hole covers and drain and tree grates!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[N-Osoi]

More nice ideas, thanks! I've only got a B&W laser printer at the moment, but printing sounds like a good idea... might have to invest as I can see lots of other applications. @Cat I will take note of the purple!

 

@cteno4 I found 1/64 tape on Amazon (and other widths) so I might add that to my ever growing list of purchases 😛 seems incredibly thin though - less than half a millimetre - I guess that's scale for those lines along the side of the road. I now also realise that Japan has so many powerlines above ground, something that really gives that Japan feel... maybe because of earthquakes or hard ground? Anyway Will try and add.

[cteno4]

Yes the 1/64” pin tape is very thin. One of the reasons I like printing roads.

 

inkjet printers are pretty inexpensive, it’s the ink that gets ya!

 

yes a hallmark of much of Japan is a lot of above ground wires!

 

jeff

[tossedman]

I'm with Jeff on the printed roads. I've tried it and you can make them look pretty good of you know your way around graphics on a computer. Here's a  module I did a few years ago.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Todd

Edited May 4 by tossedman

[tossedman]

I drew road signs in Illustrator. You used to be able to get road signs from Kobaru but they've gone out of business. Fortunately Sakatsu has picked up a lot of the Kobaru products including the road surface signs. They are dry transfer and you rub them on á la Letraset. Here's a link to them.

Edited May 4 by tossedman

[N-Osoi]

Yeah they look great @tossedman, and thanks for the link. Might be a while before I can get a decent colour printer, but it's now on the list.