Bridgework: River Banks

[Zox]

The jury will please note that the road now has manholes in it.



I ended up having to lighten up the dark ring around the cover a bit from what's shown here. My printer was rendering it too dark, and it looked fake--real objects just go from color to color, they don't have hard outlines drawn around them.

Here's what they look like "in place" on the road:





The pages with the road printed on them are currently at the bottom of Mare Testorum (Lat.: lake of dullcote), in preparation for further work.

Interestingly, the Dullcote is necessary for appearance as well as protection; without it, the laser print is glossy enough to look "wrong" as a road surface. If you look at the upper picture, you can see a faint reflection of the module end on the surface of the road.

[John]

think they need to be a tad darker

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I agree with John, a little more contrast seems necessary.

[Zox]

think they need to be a tad darker

Check this shot from Bing Maps of the actual intersection:



These manholes are exceedingly low-contrast. Remember, most things in the real world are basically dirt-colored.

Besides, I actually tried darker in my first couple of iterations, and it just looked cartoonish.

[John]

i dont know .. the manhole cover in my front yard is pretty obvious .. look at this picture as an example .(this is not my neighborhood )

http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&cp=qhm0vm8m891t&scene=25247110&lvl=2&sty=b&where1=Severn%2C%20MD

[DKS]

I think you'll find that manhole covers vary considerably from place to place and across time as well. Given the images of the actual location, I think Rob is rendering them correctly.

[wm3798]

The manholes look good, but the car in the picture is white... man, that's really throwing me off!

 

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Now that I've seen the shot again, I agree, you got it right.

[bbussey]

Zox, looks great!

[Zox]

Sigh...I only had to redo the road three or four times yesterday before I managed to get a good "set" put together with all the revisions in place. But I think I'm back to the point I was at on Halloween... 





Comparison shot courtesy Microsoft:



This is as good a place as any to summarize the major compromises I've made so far, between reality and module, to get to this point.

--I moved the dam (and its associated viewing area on the riverbank) a bit closer to the bridge, so I could include it in the module. I was originally going to leave it off, but was convinced by others that it was essential to the scene--and they were right.

--I also moved the side-road at the left of the picture a bit closer to the bridge, to retain the relationship to the dam, and also so the intersection would lie completely on the module.

--I deleted the side-road at the right entirely, since there's no reasonable way to get it back up to "module height" between its intersection with River Street and the end of the module. Even if I could, I couldn't guarantee a similar road to meet it on the next module, so it would have ended dying unrealistically at the module joint anyway.

--Similarly, on the south bank of the river, I'll have to delete the end of a parking lot, replacing it with a simple grassy slope to get back to "module height."

I guess that means this isn't really an "exact recreation of a prototype scene" after all, but I figure the bridge is the star of the show. The rest of the scenery is supporting cast--it should look "right," which bizzarely enough sometimes means not slavishly copying reality.

[DKS]

I guess that means this isn't really an "exact recreation of a prototype scene" after all, but I figure the bridge is the star of the show. The rest of the scenery is supporting cast--it should look "right," which bizzarely enough sometimes means not slavishly copying reality.

I think you pegged it right there. You've gotten closer to "reality" than many others have who have claimed so. Some of the compromises you made were necessary in order to present the scene well in the chosen venue--a module; I think these can be dismissed as technicalities. The rest were a function of artistic license, and sometimes an adaptation that is not precisely identical in every respect can look better than one that is precise simply because we're not looking at reality, but an artist's rendering of it. The process of adaptation sometimes presents issues that are resolved with a good eye better than a ruler.

[Lucas in Alaska]

Rob,

 Having grown up in the Kankakee area and seeing that bridge and dam every time I went to my grandparents house I think you have really nailed it. The first time I saw the mock-up of the bridge I knew what bridge you were modeling at it had been 10+ years since I had seen it. Great job!!! It will be nice to see overall pics when you are finished.

Lucas

[Zox]

Okay, time to make like a high-level cleric and resurrect this thread.

I spent some time over the last couple of weeks making up strips of sidewalk/curb combo--far more than I needed for the current module, actually, but while I was set up for production, why not?

Two particular bits were relatively complicated as they both have grass strips embedded in them, and have to "submarine" to bring the end of the sidewalk down to road level. Here's those bits, with the holes I had to make in the underlying foamcore:



And here are those pieces glued into place as part of the road "unit," with the road sitting in place on the module, and some additional sidewalk work done:



On a side note, long-time viewers of this program may remember that at one point, I had to literally saw the bridge off the module in order to correct a bulge that had developed in the river. When I reattached it, the kerf of the saw meant that there were small gaps between the ends of the bridge and the abutments at either side.

During this latest period, I filled those gaps in with styrene and got a layer of paint down on both the styrene and the foam roadbed at the ends of the module, since I can't ballast where the joiner tracks will sit. I didn't bother posting pictures at the time, since it wasn't an especially photogenic piece of work, but it's visible in the picture above.

To finish this update, here's a couple of "beauty shots" I took to see how the sidewalks and curbs work. I'm going to call them "good enough" and continue on.

[Zox]

I've discovered one problem with spray-mount adhesive--it will attempt to shrink ever-so-slightly as it dries, so any seams in your material will tend to pull apart. That left me trying to patch a gap in my laser-printed road with paint:



Fortunately, the evil seam is under the bridge where it's not terribly obvious. As for the other spot in the picture, where I had some glue squeeze-out? Well, as many people have pointed out to me, there are few flawlessly perfect and clean roads found in the wild.

Yesterday I finally glued the road assembly in place, and left it to dry overnight:



Three-ounce fishing sinkers make good gluing weights, but these egg-shaped ones do have a tendency to roll. Eventually I'll probably either glue an O-ring to each one for a resting surface, or just use a hammer to flat-spot them.

I also glued into place most of the styrofoam scenery underlayment on the banks, and put a layer of "glueshell" over the foam on the southwest bank:



This will be the easiest of the four bank areas to scenic; there's a chain-link fence, but I know how to do those, and I can add it later after the basic scenery is completed. For now, it'll just be a grassy knoll slope.

Tonight I did a bit of touchup painting on the concrete on that embankment, and on some spots on the bridge that aren't easily visible in person but show up as unpainted styrene from certain angles in my photos. Then, I crossed my fingers, and pulled the clamps and weights off of the bridge assembly. Fortunately, nothing went "sproing."



Here's a low-angle shot:



I did put some 0.030" styrene strip under the middle of the road, to try to add a bit of "crown." It's not really evident, though. Which is okay--I know it's there.

I have one more bit of scenery to prefabricate and insert under the bridge, at the left-hand side of the road. I couldn't do it as part of the road assembly and still be able to fit the assembly through the arch, and I can't scenic it in place because there's no room to work! Once I've got that chunk glued in, though, I'll be able to start glueshelling the slopes on this end of the module.

So here's where where the module stands as of this evening:

[Zox]

Glueshell--at least a preliminary contour--is in place on the northwest bank:



And on the southwest bank, some nutbar loaded up a B-29 with lawn clippings and made an "environmental impact statement" next to the bridge:



(Good golly, that repaint on the retaining wall looks awful. Yet another task for the punch list...)

Now I'm back to watching paint (and glue) dry.