This is the Jordan kit I started a week ago. Except for the bumpers and maybe a placard on the side for an advertisement, I’m done. The kit went well. The mint green color is an old Baltimore Transit Company color used on its buses until around 1973. I used to ride the 44x to school.

I recently picked up a Jordan Bus model at MB Klein‘s in Cockeysville – I have been going there for 28 years and have been a decent hobby shop. This was my first Jordan model and plan to airbrush it after it is finished – shouldn’t be too hard since I’m careful with masking.

Anyway, a while back I purchased 1/100 scale figures on eBay that I have used for places where my citizens are more than 2 feet from the front of the layout. They are convincing and at the price I paid I can have a whole city of them for a few bucks unlike the more popular figures from Preiser and others.

Since I had a number of seated figures, this was the right time to use them in my Jordan Bus model. As you see from the pictures below, they fit just fine – and better than a normal HO scale figure would fit. On the first few pics I show assembly of the model, then adding people. The latter pictures show a comparison of the relative sizes of HO scale people versus the 1/100th scale figures – and I have to say that I am all about the smaller people!

My eyes are getting old for this and my hands are a little big for the pieces, but the interior is underway:

Here they are all seated. I added two more standees after this pic was snapped….

Here is the bus with the standees and the body setting on it:

Here is a shot of several people on the right that are sold as HO and their scale heights and the 1/100th scale people on the left that are a little better fitting into the bus: (that fellow with the lantern must be at least 300lbs!)

Here is a shot of them standing near the bus. I vote for 1/100th scale people!

Up to now I have been a big proponent of this method for making roads, but have had few chances to actually weather the stuff beyond a few selected places on my railroad. Rather than just blow off hot air, this time I am going to show the process.

So with no further ado, I chose a section that needed weathering (beyond dust) and documented what I did with my handy camera- usually I shoot later and regret it, but decided to document it here. This is the beginning shot of the area – it is on the side of the railroad that you see when you enter the train room. As I am still detailing, there are no crossing signals yet and more detail is needed, but you’ll get the drift.

I have had these weathering chalks forever – and if you recognize who made them let me know so I can get more. Recently in MRH I saw someone with the same chalks and made me think to ask here. The colors here are white, grey, and two shades of brown.

Using a knife blade I scratched off chalk over the section I am weathering letting the dust fall where it will. For the dirty edges of the road I am using brown, and for the middle of the road white and grey. Here it is before working it in with a brush:

After the above step I use a trash 2″ brush from any big box store to work the chalk into the roadbed:

On the dirt sections I press the brush down and in circles. It creates a chalk smudge near the edge of the road that matches my dirt that was glued down much earlier. Here is what the smudges look like prior to streaking the road:

Now it is beginning to look like something! It looks like old muddy leftover crud from a rain that washed onto the road – or old dusty dirt that has spilled onto the street. I am not sure that you can overdo something like this. Now for the next step I smudge the chalk into the direction of traffic travel – back and forth until all of the little specks of chalk have been worked into the foam road bed:

In the picture above I tweaked the contrast a bit to exaggerate what you see on the road. Here are more pictures:

I hope that someone else tries this out and has a good experience with it. When I looked at the amount of street I wanted on my railroad and the cost of commercial products, I was either going to do something else less expensive or re-think the whole city approach. Glad I found this inexpensive way to create streets!

I am always looking for alternate methods of creating something. With regard to road material, I have used Creatology Fun Foam, card stock, styrene. For foliage I have used pot toppers, moss, lichen, various Walther’s products, dirt, etc.

When it comes to buildings, kits are nice but sometimes I need something different. There are few kits to represent taller buildings, so I went on a path to create some of my own structures out of different materials. There are a few buildings that are paper-sheathed over FoamCore:

And sometimes I need something made from PlexiGlas:

This is a reasonable and inexpensive way to create a city and not too time consuming. If you have questions about how these came to be, email me at joppaironworks – AT – yahoo – dot – com

Here are a few pics I took of my Creatology Fun Foam roads. I am looking to put together an article for MRH about this.

Below is a bridge that I recently created so that one of my roads didn’t terminate into thin air. It is foam core, wood, Faller railings, and Creatology Fun Foam (UNWEATHERED):

Another close up – not weathered yet:

This is somewhat weathered but uses Highball Cinder to create a look of crumbled macadam:

Patches in the macadam courtesy of a Sharpie marker:

Un weathered but striped with a paint pen from Michael’s Crafts:

A little weathering and more highball cinder for crumbled macadam:

Weathered. Garbage courtesy of my wood stove, shredded paper, and clipped up blue grocery bags that seem to be ubiquitous in the urban landscape:

Per the Yahoo post, here are pics with decals for graffiti.

I’ve always liked old glass plate photos. Here are a few samples that I have done from PhotoShop. I’ll post my process of doing this on another page:

This is the original engine for Joppa Iron Works bringing a caboose back for repair.

The crew at Joppa Iron Works had to create their own slag cars back in the day. This one was photographed outside of the rolling mill.

In town, Habersack’s Cafe has served thirsty customers since the early 1900′s and has a family heritage. The owner had a business relationship with GBS Brewery (which was close by) while many others were outlets for Monumental Beer.

Another old gondola on the grounds of the mill.

These pictures in PhotoShop require a base paper image. You can search for these on a site like Flickr if you type in “Textures” and search for the ones that are represented by old paper. It is interesting to me online that some people have such a hobby of looking for textures.