Road to nowhere

That black, unfinished foamboard road (my amalgam of the local road through Wassen and the A4 motorway) has lain dark, ugly and unfinished for too long..

First, some footpath/gutters.... Some stripwood will do, painted with grey:

And one side pinned down into place using contact glue:

And some plasticard sides (below):

Then I applied a roll of Noch 44100 Z scale roading. This was bought on a whim on a recent visit to a foreign hobby shop and it's quite a neat product. Crepey in nature, its flexible enough to be stretched around slight curves. It's also self adhesive.

For sharper corners, you can cut the thing in half and make tighter curves:

 Then another stick of stripwood for the other side:

  I've also started to add a bit more foliage around the place in the Wattinger tunnel area:

OK, so I've almost run out of this stuff (the roll is only a metre long) and the road is only just reaching town, but overall I'm happy with it so far. I probably should have taken some width off it as it headed into town to give a little forced perspective. 

A bridge too far?

Quite a few things have been going on at Wassen in seemingly random spurts, so these posts might seem a little out of order...

You may have noticed in recent pics that a start has been made on the 'big viaduct' on the middle level - the Mittleren Meinreuss Brücke.

In a 'chicken-and-egg-like' quandary, it is hard to put a bridge in after you have laid scenery, but it is also hard to lay scenery round after you have installed a bridge. So I figured I might put in the southern end of the viaduct so that some scenery could be applied around it in the gorge, and then later on complete the rest of the thing.

For about a year I have been looking at and purchasing various stone and brick lookalike sheets and have settled upon this Kibri plastic sheeting. t is a little overscale for Z, but to my eye, doesn't look too bad. I'm not sure if the true Z scale sheets I have seen have enough detail to pop when seen from afar.

As usual I have no plan but made some guestimated measurements from pictures and drew some lines and curves til it looked about right.

As an aside, teh cutting mat here (found for $2 at the local recycling shop) is great for not only cutting things on, but also for helping my eyeball get 90-degree corners more accurate.

After cutting, some inner facing was added to the piers

the 'blanked off' arch at left in the pics below is semi-prototypical, and the middle arch is where the Sustenpass road goes under the railway, so I have added a black blanking piece at the far end in case someone tries to peer through this...

A few capping stones and washes of paint later:

Tacked into place and the far side (which will be cut down in height) being tried on for size:

A start being made on the middle arch... A paint tin providing an appropriate radius for the main chord!