Street Life

A couple of weeks ago the crew from Sunshine Model Railway Club had their August exhibition, and for the first time in three years I was not exhibiting Victoria Street, so this gave me plenty of opportunity to have a good look around the trader stands and have a rummage through their boxes of obscure modelling items.

I am always on the lookout for people to fill out the street scenes of the layout, as trams tend to run through an urban environment and people are an active component to the operations of trams be it 4mm to the foot or 1:1 scale.

Another thing is that streets are full of other features, and needless to say I was stoked to find scale parking meters, ideal for the inner urban scene, and the soon to be scourge of my local traders and residents.

The other aspect are the parking bays and road markings that go along with the street scene, on many layouts at exhibitions I have seen a perfectly ballasted and weathered railway blighted by an attempt to 'model' a road by a dark grey strip of paint divided with an equally harsh attempt of hand painting a centre line, some may have even tried to mask the road before painting the lines, only for it to bleed under the tape.

The method I use on Victoria Street is the glue and paper strip technique, it gives sharp lines and a tidy finish, the paper I use is bog standard office paper cut into strips 1.5 mm wide and trimmed to length glued into place with PVA glue on the bitumen road surface of my choice, 400 grit wet and dry sand paper. It works for me.

(It is also easier than painting road markings, especially when you have already hung the trolley wire!)

So here are a couple of happy snaps with the slightly better digital SLR.

 

 

Evening twilight on Victoria St, now with metered parking



Looking for change for the meters, from under the wires.

Glenn