Simple Grade Crossing

[chuck geiger]

HOW TO:

Several Popcicle sticks, a few cut to track width and keep a few original size. They work
better than putty knife.

DAP brand DryDex Spackle
Better to tape off the area marking the road/grade crossing, saves you time chipping away
excess and vacuuming.

Form the DAP with sticks into the road - grade crossing.

Let dry over night.

Take a sanding block over the pour and expose rail heads and smooth out crossing. Use hobby knife to
clear flange ways. Vacuum out.

Take a mixture of water, PAVEMENT and GRAY Wally-World cheap acrylics and dab in, covering all the Spackle
splatters and the sides of the pour.



Let everything dry, come back and clean rail heads - More to come.

Need to let it dry and lighten.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Looks great, as per usual, Chuck!

[jpwisc]

That looks just like the road to a scrap dealer I used to rail fan in Minneapolis.

[chuck geiger]

Thanks Ed! JPWISC love old style grade crossings.

[MichaelWinicki]

What I do in addition, and it looks like you did the same Chuck, was allow the railhead to be a little higher than the overall height of the road so that when I clean the track I do not strike roadway along the railhead... Not prototypical of course but eliminates a maintenance headache.

[wazzou]

I find it's easier to get a smooth flat surface using a damp sponge after dry to sort of wet sand with the sponge.  Just FYI.

[chuck geiger]

Mike and Wazzou good points - cleaning rail I use the sanding stick tip.

[chuck geiger]

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Paint or colored pencils?

[wazzou]

Chuck -

Here is what I mean when you can wet sand with a sponge.  I put a crown in the road surface doing it like this and the road is perfectly smooth.

[chuck geiger]

Paint with thin modeling masking tape, not smooth. I came over it with
cheap pastel chalks. Next time I Wazzou it with wet sponge instead of sanding. Funny
thing it's smooth, but with the layers of paint and weathering it looks torn up. I might
even come back over this and start over unless the distress look is in.

[MichaelWinicki]

Paint with thin modeling masking tape, not smooth, so it's not. I came over it with
cheap pastel chalks. Next time I Wazzou it with wet sponge instead of sanding. Funny
thing it's smooth, but with the layers of paint and weathering it looks torn up. I might
even come back over this and start over unless the distress look is in.

I'm thinking it's too distressed looking Chuck.

I'd start over with a good base color...

Let that sit for a day or two and then slowly add whatever additional colors or weathering you want to ad.

I've redone the coloring on several of my roads and one thing I've learned is "one layer at a time" and when it comes to making a road look distressed it's very easy to go over the edge and create something that goes quickly from "distressed" to "it ought to be condemned."

[wazzou]

I like the coloring...to me it just looks rutted, gouged and un-even.

[MichaelWinicki]

I like the coloring...to me it just looks rutted, gouged and un-even.

It could be due to how roads deteriorate from one part of the country to another.

In my part of the northeast... You start out with a base color... The road is all one color, it starts out a very dark gray and quickly lightens to a light-shade of gray.

Then you start seeing tar-lines where the road-crews have attempted to cover cracks in the asphalt.  One season of tar lines ends up being a slightly different shade than an older season.

You then get pot-holes and again pot-holes attended to over different seasons can have a slightly different color.

Finally you get the water/underground utility folks that cut squares and rectangles out of the roadway, do a repair and apply an asphalt patch.  And just like the tar-lines and filled pot-holes, the rectangular construction spots can vary in color.

All that being said, the road still maintains a somewhat uniform base color.

In some cases tires/exhaust can leave a "track", but I don't see a lot of that around here... Or I should say it's very subtle.

[wazzou]

Full disclosure, I live in Washington and was just in Wenatchee on Thursday, last week. 
We don't have that sort of degradation around here. 
I think Chuck is a great modeler and doing a great job, I just think he's adopted a new to him technique and he'll find that he can refine it over time.