Hi Steve, traffic is 100% correct, it is American, thus other way around from us in S.A.


The gray is Tamiya light gray, to which I added a little bit of Tamiya Buff
hope that helps!

and? any verdict on these yet?

WOW!!! Very very nicely done!!!!

the highway scene is the least complete, so I simply trimmed a portion off to hide what is still incomplete...  not shown is a model of Miss Betties Diner by Walthers. and I have cut the 'unplanted' parts of the embankments, etc... lol  I am not happy with the black marks in the middle of the lanes either, but that will be fixed in the future sometime....

thanx for the comments.  much appreciated.  I have 'planted' some more corn, and added a small patch at the end that is already harvested.  I also build the Walthers cornerstone 'Miss Bettie's Diner' kit, and is in the final steps of completing that.  Also in progress is the highway overpass.  it is on its 2nd iteration.

I attempted to use thin cardboard for the surface, but applied white glue that was diluted too much. it got soaked up by the cardboard, and cased a LOT of wrinkles in the paper.  from previous experience I was not in panic, I knew that once it dries, the paper will smooth out.   well, reality is a little stranger than theory, and it actually DID get much better, but there were about 5 fairly big bubbles in the paper that I could on convince to go smooth in any way I knew how...

So O sanded the paper off, back to the wood base, and opted for plan B.... I have a large roll of styrene that I bough at Maizey's, so I decided to rather use plastic.   I applied some contact adhesive to the wood, and rough cut some plastic, then also applied contact cement to the plastic.  let it all go off a bit, and glued the new plastic road surface to the wood.

A WORD OF WARNING! Contact cement has solvents that technically make it incompatible with styrene!!!!

I applied the contact cement as thin as possible to the plastic, all went well well.  however, once applied to the wood, I ended up with a few places that had too much glue, and it melted the plastic surface.  I just had to let all the solvent evaporate before the plastic cured hard again.   then I sanded the road surface as smooth as I could, removing most of the bubbles caused by the solvent.

I applied a little filler where needed, sanded down again, and added a dark gray paint coat....

So... now I am waiting for some more train time, and will then start with the road markings.  I have a faller transfer sheet with some road markings, but the lines will need to be masked and painted on...   I also scratch built the brigde sides, and barriers, which still need some work before fitting...

These to modules are taking a lot of time, but I am trying to vary what I work on, to avoid getting to a point where I get bored with that item... so it might seem like I am hopping around and have no plan...but it is intentional... 

and thats my line, and I am sticking to it!!!   hehehehe

After sculpting the polystyrene, I added first a thin 'soupy' layer of RhinoLite to get into all the holes and crevices left by carving the polystyrene.  then, a thicker consistency mix was added over the thin layer.  this layer is used to smooth off most of the polystyrene surface.

Then when dry (about a day later) it is sanded with 80grit paper to smooth things over.  I do some of the sanding with a belt sander to sough the surface, then finish by hand with a sanding block and paper.  I migh brown oxide powder into the RhinoLite to tint it to a brown color.  This prevents white spots on the modules, should the scenery be bumped or somehow damaged....  In this mix I did not add enough oxide powder, so it came out a very faded browninsh color...  still, better than arctic snow white...

I modified an unbranded building kit into what is now my ranch house.  The kit is originally a 2 storey building that looks like it could be a block of shops with upstairs living area.  I painted the kit using Tamiya acrylics.  Then I added the porch floor and the handrails. and lastly the wood poles and roof.  The floor and roof are styrene sheet stock that is scribed for wood floor (or boxcar sides) and the roof is corrugated metal.  The handrails are leftovers from a N scale bridge kit I built some time ago...

I added some figures to liven things up.   The boy with the dog is a N scale man in a running position...  not shown in the pics is a cat on the roof.  That was originally a cast whitemetal N scale fox.  I cut its muzzle off, and using a file made the tail thinner, and bent it to a more cat like posture. so I have a cat on a hot tin roof...

the men on the porch are playing cards, while oupa and ouma are sitting on a couch enjoing the goings on around them...

I fitted a base for the structure 'into' the RhinoLite and polystyrene, by cutting some of it out.  Then glued the base into place, and filled the space with general purpose filler.   hence the white around the house.  it is a little less messy than the Rhinolite...

very nicely done!!!

I will post final pics, of the completed table. 

also, apologies that all the pictures have a dark background, the phone camera flash does not like low light conditions too much...


thanx for the comments guys!