Lockdown Activities: Train Room Streets

Along with creating a mountain for the Granite Farms Estates HO gauge model railroad layout, we spent a great deal of time creating streets!

We seemed to have the basic town layout all set, so we set down self-adhesive black vinyl wallpaper strips that came in a good width for the streets. 

Street layout before removing protective
film from the adhesive

Walt suggested straight roads, and we
cut them to size, including side streets 

Walt reminded us he wanted to run a trolley down one of the long streets.

So we laid out the trolley track, which took
several tries to minimize curves, yet extend
the full length of the platform table, with one
building in a fixed position as an obstacle

Walt kept talking about how he used to spread glue and sprinkle gray granules that one can purchase in a model shop, to have the streets show more texture. We found some abrasive paper for grinding/polishing machines that was textured enough that when we used rollers on the vinyl strips over the abrasive, it created a bumpy surface. We did "rubbings" of the whole length of roadwork.

Okay, not quite bumpy enough.

By now, we were able to leave the retirement community. The staff at Snyder Ace Hardware was kind enough to let us scoop a couple quart containers worth of sand from broken bags they could not sell. We spread Elmer's glue on the vinyl strips, sprinkling sand, and letting them dry.

Okay, now they were too textured!

Fortunately the glue-sand mixture peeled off the vinyl strips, and we started again. We spread the glue, then put the sand in empty soup cans with window screen rubber-banded over the top, and sifted the sand on the gluey strips.

Sifting sand over glue-covered vinyl strips

We had a lot of roadway to cover

Walt suggested gray streets to look "weathered"
instead of looking like fresh black asphalt,
so we used a flat primer spray paint

Now we used the adhesive to lay down the
streets, after first cutting the one street
lengthwise into three strips to make sure
the trolley track was exposed

The sand-covered strip between the tracks shed sand particles that could possibly block the trolley wheels. We removed our homemade 'asphalt' and used the grinding machine abrasive strip cut to size, spray painted it gray and glued it down. I suppose we could have cut the abrasive strip for all the streets, but it did not have self-adhesion and was a stiffer curled paper that would have been difficult to "install."

Now it was time to lay down the street lines,
using self-adhesive pinstriping, cut in
HO lengths of 9-feet, and spaced 15-feet apart

We also put down stop lines and parking space lines, at intervals we thought were appropriate for a small town. 

Walt mentioned that the buildings were not in their final placement. Oh, boy! I would not have started on the streets if I realized the town was still in the planning stages!

The pinstriping did not want to adhere to the sand

We cleared sections of buildings and used
a guard made of cardboard to spray a
fixative over the streets, after vacuuming
all the sand that had loosened from the roads

The fixative did not help adhere the pinstriping lines to the streets. Walt gave us ideas on getting the lines to lay flat. We tried plastic liquid cement and even heating the strips with a hair dryer. They seemed to curl even more. Back to using Elmer's glue, and using weights to keep the lines flat until they dried, seemed to work the best.

Were we done yet?

No. Walt mentioned the long streets should be through streets; no stop lines!

Now that the lines were firmly adhered to
the streets, we had to pull up most of 
the stop lines and many of the center lines
to realign them to the 9- to 15-foot ratio

We ran out of pinstriping, so do not have crosswalks (now on the side streets only!) and some other lines defining parking areas and the trolley track.

But we are done for now!

Next: Sidewalks? But only when the buildings are in their final placement!