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Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Building Willow Lake Road

As I showed in a prior post about the trackwork in my layout town of Santa Rosalia, the end of my mythical SP branch line, the road which passes the depot is Willow Lake Road (see the location and the template for this road at this link: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-branch-end-at-santa-rosalia.html ). In the present post, I will show the construction of this road using styrene sheet, as I have done previously, and been happy with the result (see: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/07/extending-bromela-road.html ).
     Some time back, I bought a large sheet of 1/16-inch thick styrene, and have been using it for a variety of projects calling for large pieces of material. That’s the material I used for Bromela Road (see link at the bottom of the previous paragraph) and is intended for this road project as well. Using the paper templates shown in the post linked near the top of this post, I cut the three pieces of styrene roadway, using a utility knife. Shown below are these pieces, so far just laid in place to check the fit.


Just beyond the end of the styrene strip in the middle distance, you can see where I had to cut away some of the slope built up alongside the harbor edge, to clear the road. The unpainted rectangle to the left of the road is the footprint of the Santa Rosalia depot.
     I primed the styrene with ModelMaster gray primer, then “glued” it down with taxidermist’s paper mache (the Brandt’s Compound mentioned in a previous post: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-shumala-extension.html ), while blending the sides of the roadway with the same paper mache.This is much like the process I used in extending Bromela Road in Ballard (I described the formation of road shoulders in the post cited earlier, at: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/07/extending-bromela-road.html ).
     Once the glue-down function and blended roadsides had dried sufficiently (I usually try to leave it overnight), it looked like the photo below.


A few rough spots have been sanded, but for the most part, whatever contours result from the application process will look all right.
     Once the paper mache was fully dry, I painted the shoulder areas with my usual “ground” color, Rust-Oleum Nutmeg, and then painted the road surface with Rust-Oleum Gray Primer. Though the road surface needs weathering and a little warmer color, which I will do with tube acrylics, the photo below shows the area after these additions of Rust-Oleum colors. The offshore fog bank still needs some refinement.


Note above that the road painting does not extend quite to the backdrop. There will be strategic shrubbery placement in the completed scene, so that the road-backdrop intersection will not be visible. That intersection is also obscured by the depot, when it is in place, as you see below, from a  more normal viewing elevation. A tractor-trailer is posed on the road.


     Pending weathering, installation of Willow Lake Road is complete. I also need to add the side street alongside the industries in Santa Rosalia, Laguna Street, but will wait until the industry spur and structures have been located before fitting that street into the scene.
Tony Thompson

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