Studio Mid sidewalks

[cteno4]

studio mid just released a set of sidewalks for their construction site and parking lot. interesting simple side walks with stone curbs and curved corners. also provide some guard rails and a bit of greenery to go along the curb. neat thing is they give you some decals or cutouts for some bicycle lane markings and some manhole covers.

 

comes in a gray and a ash gray.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10159126

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10159122

 

not a heck of a lot for $17, but if you want it all premade and ready to assemble.

 

not sure exactly what roadway they are showing in the picture. wonder if thats the next thing to come out with?

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

N scale truncated domes?

 

Niiiice.

[The_Ghan]

Very expensive.  For $17 and a half-day I can scratch build 10m of footpath.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[keitaro]

Very expensive.  For $17 and a half-day I can scratch build 10m of footpath.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

 

please share your skills 

[The_Ghan]

Keitaro,

 

You're kidding!  Bainbridge board, scalpel, celotape, airbrush and PVA glue.  With a degree in Architecture I can promise you it doesn't take long for the average under-graduate to get a handle on modelling streetscapes pretty quickly.  I don't pretend to obtain the precision of the stuff on HS, but I won't be spending $100 to do the average city block, either.  Plus, with Bainbridge it is easy to do custom corners, roundabouts, laybacks, gently curved streets and odd shaped junctions.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[Mudkip Orange]

Plus, with Bainbridge it is easy to do custom corners, roundabouts, laybacks, gently curved streets and odd shaped junctions.

 

Is there any kind of a web tutorial you could link me to? Didn't find much when I went the LMGTFY route.

[The_Ghan]

Bainbridge is a kind of high density paper-based board that is used in architectural modelling.  I'm sick with the flu ATM and have a smashing headache, but I promise to look into it for you.  When I was at Uni ... 20 years ago ... I always used it for footpaths and roads.  I even used to keep 5-6 sheets of two shades of grey so that I could quickly do the cut outs and stick down my footpaths without having to paint.  Seriously, at 1:100 on an architectural model about 2' x 3' I'd have roads, kerb, gutter and lane markings done in an hour or two using 2mm thick board.  I've got no idea if anyone has done a tut. on YouTube.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[keitaro]

on a side note how do you guys do line markings on roads? i tried hand painting and discovered it's hard to be accurate.

 

Is there a suitable pen or something for this anyone recomends.

 

Also looking forward to this bainbridge might google but later but got meetings atm.

[bill937ca]

I have peel and stick road markings. Recently used some on my tram layout.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10021994

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10021995

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10032598

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10040487

[keitaro]

hmm looks interesting but do you think they will stick well to plaster with paint on it?

 

My experience with plaster and stickers is they come of after a short time? any thoughts?

[cteno4]

Well there are a number of decal sets out there like these

 

Tgw

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10032598

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10021994

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10021995

 

I have been printing my streets for my ttrak street car modules and it works well. If you print on white you can get white by just not printing there. The upside here is that you can design anything you dream up! Downside is you have to mount the printed street down to something. I've been printing on 80lb drawing paper and mounting it to 020 styrene, then mounting the print to the 020. Then mount all that to the module/benchwork.

 

Another option I have just started playing with is to make your own rubon transfers. You can make these by printing on special paper and then using an adhesive sheet to lift the toner/ink and stick it to your surface. Downside is you can't do white and, like decals, you have a bit of raise halo that you need to do a layer of matte clear to get rid of. You can also create water slide decals this way as we'll. Cost is about $1.50 per 8.5x11sheet.

 

Another way to make lines is to use pin tapes. These use to be big in drafting but are hard to find these days, but you can find them on ebay for finger nail art cheap. There is a thread on this here

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,4177.0.html

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[cteno4]

hmm looks interesting but do you think they will stick well to plaster with paint on it?

 

My experience with plaster and stickers is they come of after a short time? any thoughts?

 

With decals, pin tape, stickers etc you need to seal things down with a coat of dull coat. The paint for the road surface should make a good surface to put down decals, stickers, rubons, etc

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[cteno4]

Forgot to mention some folks make small cardboard stencils and airbrush their lines and markings. Not tried this myself yet.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[The_Ghan]

Forgot to mention some folks make small cardboard stencils and airbrush their lines and markings. Not tried this myself yet.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

 

I tried this years ago at Uni.  I was getting too much bleed.  If I undersprayed the process was taking too long.  I just don't have that kind of time.

 

For architectural models I use double sided tape and plain bond paper.  Go for something with a high clay content.  In Australia the AAA brand (made in Thailand) is very white and smooth with a high clay content.  If I need yellow lines I simply run it through a colour photocopier and print an inch-wide yellow strip.  I don't use PVA glue (although it works) simply because I end up leaving a smudge somewhere that puts a gloss spot on my road.  But then, I'm paranoid even about my own greasy fingerprints on the road.  Once it is on the bainbridge it only looks worse as time goes by.  Try this:

 

Tools: scalpel (or stanley knife with brand new blade), cutting board, metal straight edge, double-sided tape (the thin kind, without the spongy filler)

 

Method:

 

1. Peel off a length of tape and stick it to one side of the paper, leaving the other backing on the tape.  Press down firmly so you have good adhesion to the paper;

 

2. Cut a 1mm wide strip of the paper with the tape attached.  Here's the trick: you need to cover the 1mm wide strip with the straight edge because it reduces the amount of curling.  Practice with ordinary celotape first if you like.  The sharper the blade the less curl you will have.  Also, using the slightly curved scalpel blade produces less curl - I use blade No: 23.  Holding the blade horizontal produces almost no curl.

 

3. If it is an unbroken line you can stick the whole length down by removing the backing from the other side of the tape.  I usually use my magnifying glass and scalpel to do this.  Otherwise, chop the "line" into the desired lengths.  Once your road is done and the lanes are marked, you will need to spray it with a matt fixitive spray, otherwise your lane markings might curl with a change to humidity.

 

Hope this helps.  I just had a look at one of our latest models and noticed that we didn't even bother with lane markings.  Of course, these models have a different purpose to a model railroad.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[cteno4]

a much simpler option to just use pin tape. its pretty much just a colored tape you stick right down. slicing off nice 1mm strips requires a very good hand at the ruler (not impossible, just takes practice!). plus your edges will be white if the top is printed a color. this also makes for a pretty tall marking at scale (probably a few inches at least!). if you need to stick stuff down like this see about transfer adhesive at the art store. its basically just the adhesive on a removable backing (there is no plastic tape layer that double stick tape has), so when you put it on something you just get a layer of adhesive, so virtually no thickness to speak of. caution though this stuff usually sticks like mad! they use to use the stuff to put on side moulding and details on cars with it as you push it and its there! its not cheap at like $5-10 a roll, but a small roll will last you a long time to stick odd little bits down where you dont want to use glue.

 

pin tape is all one color and its also very flat. it comes out very straight when you pull it taught to put it down. just chop it then with a razor blade from the top to remove sections. use two strips of wood to march down the strip to make your cuts, one to measure a stripe length and the other to measure the gap. lay down one, chop on the edge, lay down the other from the chop point and chop on the other side, repeat.

 

You can also lay it down on a pretty good curve as well. here it helps to cut out a piece of chipboard with the curve you want it to follow and use it as a guide to keep gently curving the tape as it goes down.

 

you can get the stuff ultra cheap these days on ebay as nail tape. comes in 0.5-2mm sizes if you look around, but the standard stuff (they say 1/64" on the really thin stuff, but its really closer to 0.5mm which is right on at 3" wide scale). its also cool to use in detailing things when you need a stripe.

 

one place ive gotten it from:

 

http://stores.ebay.com/Mellow-All-Lovely-Stuff/_i.html?_fsub=131874

 

or search "nail tape"

 

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l2736&_nkw=nail+tape

 

the yellow ive picked up is pretty much the regular road yellow. the nail stuff is nice as well as it has a nice slight gloss sheen and smooth texture like a road marking has (you will loose the gloss shine with the application of matte/dull coat, but most road marking s are a bit dull from wear and dirt). the drafting pin tape does come in a smooth finish (as well as several crepe textures), but its sort of an odd matte texture sort of like transparent magic tape. drafting pin tapes are really hard to find these days, especially in anything but black and they are usually like $5-6 a roll! they use to come in a huge assortment of colors pre CAD days with dotted and dashed lines of varying widths and styles, we use to have a huge box of them at the aquarium to do markups on plans with for various sub studies. the local big art supply store had a huge box of them but had refused to drop the price. when that store closed i tried to get them to find the box to make the clear out guy an offer, but i think it got tossed as every time i pawed in it over the years it was literally covered with dust!

 

one thing i learned when did a lot of architectural modeling years back is that you can get a way with a lot with a simple implied style with the modeling methods in architectural modeling that you cant with layouts. the also change with scale, so the same techniques did not work at different scales. architectural models are about certain focus and shape and form and detail is left out to keep folks focused on the big design issues.

 

also found that many of my model train techniques did not directly translate either way. the basic skills and theories did, but the things you could get away with on one side you could not on the other a lot of the time. it was really interesting as i was building my first layout at the same time i was doing about 2 years of intensive architectural and exhibit modeling. also was getting fantastic design mentoring by someone who really knew the tricks as well as a design master.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[The_Ghan]

Jeff,

 

The differences you pick out about architectural and railroad modelling are quite valid and something I need to be mindful of.

 

Also, your pin tape tip is a great one ... although a little expensive.  We would sometimes buy the LetraSet tapes where HQ was needed.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[cteno4]

ghan,

 

yeah i was often surprised by them, but then again there is a lot of things that can carry over as well! just have to figure out the twists between them! architectural modeling has a real element of actually showing how something was built and having that roughness to get the high concept and not the details. almost want to have some things sort or rough or edgie to them to show how it was done, but with a cleaness as well. its really an odd balance.

 

the nail pin tape is like $1-2 a roll, very cheap. you can even get deals for assprtments of 10 or 12 rolls for like $2. granted many of these are sparkle colors you may never use unless you want to do a wild street or building detailing! you get like 15-20m per roll so really a lot for practically nothing. since they are one of those $1 ebay items that ship for free its really cheap! just have to wait a couple of weeks for shipping from china.

 

the letraset tape is the old school good quality drafting tape. chartpak was the other one. both are still around, but getting hard to find and much smaller selection than they use to have. just not needed as much when you can make a change in the cad and reprint a drawing for something. we use to mark up plans for all sorts of stuff with the colored tapes.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[The_Ghan]

Mate, I was at Uni 25 years ago!!! LetraTape was the ants pants.  Pin tape didn't exist!

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[cteno4]

Pin tape has been around for a long, long time. i was using it in the late 70s (guess im dating myself here...) at the aquarium design office and it was pretty old school then. pin tape is just a generic name for very thin tapes that are use to make a temporary line you can pull up. Letra, chartpak, etc are brand names and vary over time and probably country. they may even use a different generic name for it down under. I think the term pin was used as that it was usually very thin.

 

its primary use was when you wanted to put down different color lines on a blueprint that you wanted to lift off later. also used it to make lines that you wanted on a certain set of blue prints from a master then pull the lines easily off the master. it came is all sorts of colors, patterns and even different surface textures. also had stuff that was softer stickum so it could come up easily off paper if needed. they had thin plastic stuff sort of like mylar you could use on mylars and vellums. of course as computers came in most of this went out the window with the lacy-lucy

 

i think the finger nail designers discovered the stuff at some point, but probably from car body guys who use similar stuff to make pin striping in some detail work. then nail stuff is not really much different from the old drafting stuff really now. just a lot cheaper and you now can have sparkly colors!!!

 

hobby shops usually carry detailing pin striping tape in a roll that has like 4 or 5 widths on one roll (all the same color) for doing detailing with. again its pretty much the same stuff as the drafting or nail pin tapes.

 

the cool thing with pin tape is you get pretty good at laying it down straight and parallel. use to use it to make stanchion on acetate to put hand rail on in 3/4" exhibit models. it was really fast and looked great in the camera (just had to keep the lighting from reflecting on the acetate) with things looking nice and parallel. if i made the stanchions out of wood or styrene square stock or rod, things would have to be perfect as in 3D if there was any tiny bit of off kilter it showed up big time on camera, but the 2D pin tape was much more forgiving and looked just as 3D on camera (not as much 3D to the eye though, but there are all those odd changes of eye to camera).

 

cheers

 

jeff

[linkey]

on a side note how do you guys do line markings on roads? i tried hand painting and discovered it's hard to be accurate.

 

Is there a suitable pen or something for this anyone recomends.

 

Also looking forward to this bainbridge might google but later but got meetings atm.

 

What Trevor and I do at the AJMRG modules and out own layout is to 320 grade wet/dry sandpaper which gets a light coat of black spraypaint over it to give it that nice road look and then we use 2x masking tape sections to mark out where we want the line markings and then use hobby paint and a paint brush to paint on the lines.

 

We get asked at the exhibitions and by our fellow members on how we do it cause it is so neat, that when people take photos of the streetscape it looks so real and it is easy to place vehicles to where you want to place them. 

[cteno4]

yes the sandpaper works great. we used the 400grit sand paper on the old jrm layout under the whole old town scene we would set up on the fly, worked great for nice pavement texture/look. you can easily weather it as well.

 

there is a trick for making lines like this in masking tape. it uses a double bladed parallel knife that lets you slit the width out of the tape you want to either mask in or out.

 

the knives aint cheap

 

http://www.micromark.com/Parallel-Cutter,8715.html

 

could probably make your own with a couple of #11 blades and an 020 styrene shim in between and a small bolt to tie the blades together. then cram into a piece of styrene tubing for a handle. nice thing about this approach is you can do curves easily, harder to mask with wider tape around sharper curves, but possible.

 

cheers

 

jeff