Track in the street
While some regular railroads did serve a few industries from the front side, one of the distinctive parts of a trolley line was track(s) in the street. While it is a good idea to plan for your street
surfaces from the beginning, please, please be sure that your trackwork is as close to perfect before you make it more difficult to access for maintenance and repair. That, in fact, is why many
prototypes still had brick or cobblestones between and either side of the track even after the rest of the street was paved with concrete or macadam; maintenance was easier and cheaper that way.
Your choice of street type and material are somewhat tied together, though I have seen some very nice effects created with the "wrong" materials. In the bad old days, plaster was in vogue for all
types of streets; smooth for paved surfaces or hand-carved to simulate brick or stone work, a tedious and messy process. I did cobblestones that way, once, and if your patience and steadiness of hand
are up to it, it is still the best a creating a realistic feel and look. A few words of caution; clean your flangeways like a fanatic, be sure the top of the plaster is not above the tops of the
rails, and seal it well: plaster dust will destroy gear trains and commutators faster than almost anything else I know. Plaster also tends to act as a sounding board, so a quieter choice might be
Durham's Water Putty or equivilant. haven't tried that one myself, but have heard good things about it.
For the smooth type streets, plywood has long been a favorite but unfortunately also acts as a sounding board and is available in a limited range of thicknesses. A much better, although more
expensive, material is balsa; soft [i.e. easy to work with] readily available, and seems to deaden the sound. Bass wood would also be an alternative that would stand up a little better to accidental
abuse.
Carving balsa in place of a poured material [plaster, water-putty] for textured surfaces is possible and has the added advantage of not having to worry about setting times. Although I have not
finished experimenting yet, I am trying E. L. Moore's method of carving balsa with a wood burning iron and a rheostat; so far, it seems to have merit.
For the frugal, paved streets can also be modeled with non-corrogated cardboard, provided it is sealed against moisture to prevent warpage.
About the only material that I have seen used that has not given realistic looking results is molded plastic sheet stock; for the most part it's rigidity prevents following the curves in a
prototypical manner. An as yet untried TTBOMK method would be to use plastic sheets to make a plaster master, seal that, and pour a thin layer of RTV rubber into that to get your bricks or
cobblestones. You should wind up with a reasonable facsimile of the surface you want and it would be flexible enough to follow trolley curves and also absorb some of the unwanted noise. As I said,
untried, but intriguing.
I have deliberately avoided discussing girder-rail here as it can get a bit complicated and these FAQ pages are primarily for modelers without a great deal of experience. For those who are
interested, I recommend joining one of the trolley or interurban newsgroups at onelist.com or railspot.com; the expertise is there and they are more than happy to share it.
Little Jack
I am building a shelf layout of a port in N scale and wanted to have the look of the tracks laid in the concrete. Is there some place where this concrete layment is available that fits in between the tracks or a method to make this effect. I have read a book covering this in H0 scale but this seems difficult to do in N scale.
Sorry, I am in HO scale, but I think my method should work in N.
I make guard rails, inside and parallell to the running rails, just glued in place with contact cement, tested for running, then fill the gap with plaster (I use cretestone which is maleable of about 30 min) so if as always happens, plaster gets between the running rail and the guard rail it is easily scraped out before it sets, and can still be got out after setting.
Don
What I did was to put plaster in between the tracks and when it was dry enough to mold, took a truck set and pushed it through the plaster. Once completely dry, I then scraped the residue plaster off the inside of the rails. Then at the ends of the concrete, shaped it to react like the guide rails in a turnout --- as a lead in to the crossing. ---------Ger
Good use for the trucks with oversized flanges, but don't use it around turnouts - shape styrene to fit as cover plates in the points.
Will
I would use Drywall mud (joint compound). Just glob it on the tracks, using the top of the rails as the guide for your putty knife. Let the mud set a little and then take a freight car that you will not want anymore, or the trucks from one and run them back and forth over the rails. You will need to clean them to prevent the mud build up from making the "slots" too wide.
Even if it drys on you, you can take an awl, or any other sharp object of your choice and run it along the inside of the rails to improve clearance.
I would also suggest mixing the paint (for the color) to the drywall before starting, saving you the trouble of painting it later.
The drywall compound can be smoothed quite easily with a damp rag, instead of sand paper.
Ken
I pour plaster of paris myself, then when it's taken a bit of a set, run a knife blade along the inside of the rail to give me the start of a flangeway, then when it's relatively "done", I clean out the flangeway with a broken off piece of hacksaw blade. It makes the flangeway (at least in HO) just about the right size.
Don