Diorama question - method of create dockside rails?

[Rob-UK]

A question to the diorama modellers out there, related to creating dockside scenery; does anyone have experience or suggestions for creating rail lines (for railway/railroad locomotive use, and for dedicated crane rails), particularly the type that is recessed into the concrete or wood decking (rather than rail lines fitted on sleepers), similar to the image below.

I know they will be very fine, the rail itself would be approx. 0.2mm at 1:350, and there would be the recess adjacent to the line. Hopefully some of you have tried creating this effect in a small scale, and any advice would be appreciated.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_H ... n_Judy.JPG

c/o Wikipedia.com

[Pieter]

Are you going to do Bristol Harbor? That would be nice. Anyway, my own effort in 1/700 was simply to make two small parallel cuts in styrene using a steel ruler and a burmester set for the switches and using a wash with metallic black paint to suggest the rails. I do not think anything more will be visible in small scales , even 1/350 is a very small scale for railway work.

[Rob-UK]

Thanks for your reply Pieter.

I made some attempts at this recently, and agree completely with what you suggest, cutting a fairly deep cut/score carefully guided with a steel ruler, then run a dark wash in, fully paint up the surface concrete colour, and then add a highlight to the upper edge surface, which needs to be fine, scaling at around 0.2mm.

I only used Bristol as an example photo, although that might be a nice idea for the future.