Conrail Windsor St Yard (York PA) Engineering Report

[Ed Kapuscinski]

For you? You bet!

I should blog about it, but here it goes...

I love it.
It perfectly suits my agile model railroading approach.

The first thing I do is lay out the area to be paved, including under the sidewalk.

Then I score the ***** out of the underlayment. I've used a diamond pattern, but the rougher you make it, the better. This allows the clay to grip what's under it, since it's not otherwise great at it.

Then I take the clay and mash some out flat until I have a 1-3 square inch piece. Think crepe thickness, not pancake. I then place this down inside the paving area with a tiny bit of overlap with any existing stuff and push it down to further flatten it.

Do a bit of this, maybe a few linear inches of road, but not too much.

Then it's time for the roller. I used the rollers from @RAIL N SCALE , which are good, but if I were starting over, I'd also get something with a handle and a taper for larger areas. Use the roller to roll it out as flat as you can, working in one direction. While doing this I also occasionally spayed a little water on the surface too. This is also when to use the rollers with the flangeways too.

Get everything as flat as you can, feel free to use your fingers too.

Then move on to the next segment, blending it in with your finger and the roller. The reason you want to do smaller chucks at a time is because the roller wants to push the edge out when you squish it down, and that works better in smaller areas.

Don't be afraid to "go outside the lines", once dry a #11 blade and a straight edge will let you clean the edges up no problem.

Once that's done, let it dry. You can tell when it's dry by the color change (it lightens).

I then come back with a sanding block to smooth it out even more.

Lastly, I hit it with "gray" craft paint and repeat the sanding and painting until I'm happy.

There are a few reasons I like it so much. First, it stays where you put it. Second, it's easy to adjust, and third, it's easy to "undo" if you get it somewhere you don't like.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Guess I should add a recent pic too.

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[MK]

Looks snowy! 

[coosvalley]

First off, thanks, and I love the photos.+1 upvote (wait, the voting is gone?)

I am curious what you will paint them with, and how well it sticks for you. I tried some of the brick paving rollers(I have all 3 styles) with the terra cotta colored clay, and it was not dark enough. So I hit it with some acrylic, easy peasy. But when I went to clean the tracks, I rubbed off the paint too. But my experiment was a small one, and I suppose I could always just wipe the railheads with alcohol to prevent "scraping" of the paint.

My planned solution is to use their black and white clay mixed(already acquired), to get good base grey color for pavement, thinking even if I do paint it, any missing paint will just look like damaged asphalt.

[nuno81291]

First off, thanks, and I love the photos.+1 upvote (wait, the voting is gone?)

I am curious what you will paint them with, and how well it sticks for you. I tried some of the brick paving rollers(I have all 3 styles) with the terra cotta colored clay, and it was not dark enough. So I hit it with some acrylic, easy peasy. But when I went to clean the tracks, I rubbed off the paint too. But my experiment was a small one, and I suppose I could always just wipe the railheads with alcohol to prevent "scraping" of the paint.

My planned solution is to use their black and white clay mixed(already acquired), to get good base grey color for pavement, thinking even if I do paint it, any missing paint will just look like damaged asphalt.

Not that I used clay or the rollers but I have done a ton of street trackage in plaster and joint compound, as far as cleaning goes I would say you need to make the rails proud of the paving medium enough for a bright boy or whatever your choice of cleaning abrasive is, then the paint removal is much less of an issue.

[coosvalley]

Not that I used clay or the rollers but I have done a ton of street trackage in plaster and joint compound, as far as cleaning goes I would say you need to make the rails proud of the paving medium enough for a bright boy or whatever your choice of cleaning abrasive is, then the paint removal is much less of an issue.

The pavement rollers don't exactly make this possible. I thought about chucking them into a drill and using a needle file to deepen the rail grooves. But, if the rail sits above the pavement surface, it also ruins the effect IMHO, YMMV.

[nuno81291]

The pavement rollers don't exactly make this possible. I thought about chucking them into a drill and using a needle file to deepen the rail grooves. But, if the rail sits above the pavement surface, it also ruins the effect IMHO, YMMV.

Not familiar with the rollers but I can fathom they negate my point. The effect posted by rail-n-scale is wonderful, perhaps a slightly deeper mold would allow for what I am describing with the rails to end up a little more proud than the paving medium or clay in this case. And when I mean proud I mean your eyes wouldn’t pick up the effect but it may not stand up to macro photography as you suggest it may not work

[coosvalley]

I definitely have thought about it too!. A slight increase in depth of the rail groove of the rollers would give exactly what you describe, perhaps enough to work like you say, but also be barely noticeable.

But I bet just using a pencil eraser to clean the street track would also work, with careful alcohol wipe downs if there is too much accumulation.

[Mike C]

I think in my era maybe 5 pr 6 people lived along the RGS.  I can actually model them!  I do know sheep vastly out numbered humans in all of the counties served by the RGS, which meant the dating scene was...well...

5 men and 500 sheep , and all we got are goats ...lol

[chuck geiger]

Track work in the streets is boss.

[chuck geiger]

Ed meet Pelle, Pelle meet Ed - see page 42 of Feb MR.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Oh?

[Philip H]

Oh?

Yep.  Not really new techniques, but it is Pelle ...

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Is he publicizing something I've been doing? I don't have it here.

[Philip H]

he did his with Smooth It from WS and a custom polystyrene scraper to create flangeways and ever so slightly lower the height of the putty between the rails.