Improvements to Streets, Walls & Graveyards

Whilst assembling my modular Edinburgh Town, I have realised that some elements could be improved, namely streets, walls and graveyards.

The streets were made from sheets of card cobbles produced by the excellent Wordsworth Model Railway.

The sheets have kerbs on the top and bottom edges so I used the Paint programme to copy and paste these to create streets. These are 40mm wide between the kerbs.

I also used the Paint programme to make a sheet of T-Junctions.

I similarly created a sheet of Cross Roads.

The last sheet I created was of angled junctions.

I made some half length and quarter length street sections simply by cutting the original full length ones.

The problem which I had was that my original streets were simple flat strips of card, and these slid around my wargame table.

I therefore scored down the line where the kerb met the cobbled street, bent those kerb edges slightly and glued some 40mm wide felt strips to the underside, leaving a 10mm gap at each end to facilitate overlaps.

This shows a pair of streets overlapping on their junction. The streets stay in position much better with their felt backing.

I did make a couple of “bent” streets. Rather than using Paint to produce a complete sheet of these, I simply glued together a couple of short strips from the original streets. I made the junction of the felt backing at a different place to the street card junction so as to give more stability.

In total, I have: 6 x long (just under 30 cm) streets, 8 x half lengths, 8 x quarter lengths, 4 x T-Junctions, 2 x Cross Roads, 4 x Angled Junctions and 2 x Bends.

That is plenty for any town layout.

I also made three squares from an original sheet of cobbles. These are also backed with felt.

This is the small (7.5cm square) one. I also have one medium (10cm square) and one large (15cm square).

I also had some problems with my wall sections, which could be knocked over too easily, I solved this by fitting them with junction pegs made from cocktail sticks.

Here is a pair of wall sections pinned together, which makes them more stable.

I wanted a churchyard in my layout but I have previously made the Wordsworth Model Railway gravestones as separate items.

I found these moved about too easily so mounted them on card strips 25mm x 60mm, which was a great improvement. I have 4 such strips.

I have almost finished the additional Edinburgh specific buildings for my town, and will post that shortly. After that I will start on the Castle.