Bushwick Terminal

[cnw1961]

Mark, I am using 3 mm (1/8") thick cardboard as a base for the sandpaper. To use two layers – first 2 mm (to match the height of the ties) and a second 1 mm layer on top (to go above the ties) – is even easier, because then you don’t have to cut out the cardboard to go above the ties. 3 mm cardboard is perfect for my ME code 70 track to have the rail heads slightly above the road surface. I am using an universal contact cement to glue it all together. It is all pretty easy to do, the only tricky part is to get the color right. When mixing the paint, I am always trying it out on little pieces of sandpaper first. It is amazing how much the color of these acrylics change when they dry on the sandpaper. The good thing is, you can still use these pieces of sandpaper for sanding … nothing wasted . A little sanding in places after painting and gluing the sandpaper to the cardboard helps to make the grit and the cracks stand out. You can see the effect in the small pic of my post above.