Last month I posted photos of the MTH station I modified to serve the junction town of Tyrone, PA. I have a variety of ready made, kit, and scratch built structures ready to use in the town. With the station done and the street & building sites set its time to get on with construction of the town. Below are several photos of the town site.
Tyrone is located on the end of a layout lobe at the entrance to the room and can be viewed from three sides (no cheating on the backside of the buildings). The major construction challenge is that main street down the center of town is largely beyond arms reach. Anticipating this I built the benchwork strong enough for me to kneel or stand on when necessary. When laying out the street and building site plan I spent quite a bit of time up on the layout - using kneelers it wasn't too bad. My approach to building the town will be to fully install and detail the streets (while kneeling), and then later slide sidewalk/building modules against the streets working from far to near.
For ideas and inspiration I began by reviewing OGR Forum posts related to modelling streets and sidewalks - very helpful. For sidewalk and a stable base for the structures I plan to use 1/2" MDF. To achieve 6" high sidewalks I'll use 3/8" hardboard for the streets. The hardboard will be glued down with yellow carpenter's glue and sealed with spray primer. Following Tom Yorke's approach for modelling asphalt streets I'll spray paint them using Krylon stone gray for texture, and and then brush painted, striped, and weathered/. The structure/sidewalk modules will be detailed off the layout on 1/2" MDF modules of various lengths up to 30" long. As others have recommended, for a uniform look I'll remove any existing sidewalk on ready built structures (like the MTH bank). To accommodate building/street lighting wiring plugs, holes will need to be cut through the 3/4" plywood layout top in alignment with similar holes in the base of the modules. The modules will be screwed in place from below the layout. To avoid unsightly cracks between modules I plan to fabricate and test fit all the module bases before detailing the sidewalks and mounting the buildings. In modelling concrete sidewalks I plan to follow Clifford's approach starting with Rustoleum Sand Texture spray on the MDF. One intriguing idea a woodworking friend proposed is to under cut the sidewalk edge of the MDF with a router so that it slightly overrides the hardboard street. The advantage being that the radius of the street corner cut won't have to perfectly match that of the sidewalks and the sidewalk will tightly fit to the road surface. Before committing to this approach I'll do some tests with scrap pieces of hardboard and MDF as it impacts the width of the street.
Question about hardboard - for maximum stability should I use tempered or non-tempered hardboard (smooth on both sides or rough on one side) for the streets??
That's the outline of my proposed approach - before I start construction your comments/suggestions are welcome.
