"Sidewalks for city board" Topic

Am assembling around 12 to 15 brick buildings for turn of the century to present "old part of town" city settings for various pulp adventure, vsf and other game purposes. I prefer to have the buildings moveable so that I can side by side them for continuous building fronts, or scatter them for an industrial area setting. Problem is, coming up with sidewalks to place around them without making perma bases, which would not allow them to be put side by side when needed, or tons of loose sidewalks to place around them? So thought I'd throw this topic out here and see what others may have done.

I've seen building bases that have sidewalks. Create removable bases with sidewalk edges.

Old Crow/Ainsty has some.

link

Thanks,

John

Use a piece of foamcore as blocks. Make it slightly bigger than the buildings you want to put it on all around.

Then use a black cloth or better dark gray as the streets and a table covering. Put the foam core on the cloth and the buildings on the pieces of foam core. They will give some height to the effect too. If you want texture cut out pieces of cardboard and glue them down as pieces of concrete.

Make lot bases that are edged with curbs, have sidewalks, edge lawn or other landscaping as appropriate, and have blank spots where your buildings can fit. Use a black cloth on your table to simulate asphalt. Lay out the lot bases to simulate city blocks, then place the buildings.

"B'hoys Towne" has printed photographic textures of cobblestone and dirt streets, plus brick an plank sidewalks availale in print an PDF forms very inexpensively.

Streets may bought in 8" wide, 10" long sheets with or without 2" wide sidewalks printed along one side. These have curbs which may be folded up, elevating the sidewalks above the streets.

Sidewalks are also available without streets attached, but still with curbs.

The original design calls for mounting the sidewalks on standard 3/16" thick foamcore, forming straight sections then corners. When laid (or glued) to your street surface, this creates a hollow rectangle or square inside which the building can be fitted and not move around.

You can see examples on the "B'hoys Towne" page at link TVAG, just follow the navigation bar links.

I think you'll like what you see!

TVAG

Have you checked out how Matakishi handles it on his cork tile buildings? The base includes the front sidewalk and then he has end pieces of sidewalk to cap the rows of buildings with.

Robert

See 'Laying Pavement' in the Combat Zone Chronicles for another method.

link

Wow, I was really impressed with the TVAG buildings. Been wondering what to use with my Gangsters. Now I know!

Very nice.

Thanks,

John

cut up cheep floor tile, works very well, you can also add the tooling details with some sandpaper and a hobbie tool before you paint it.

Questor is absolutely right. You want Linoleum floor tile (in the US, this is the type you see on school floors. They're 1 foot square and come in grays, tans, other colors, and are available individually in stores like Home Depot for less than a buck apiece).

Use a knife to score it and it will easily break along the score. It is a bit thick at about 2mm, and has enough weight to hold itself down. It is durable and can be easily worked with a utility knife or sandpaper or files. I have a huge set of 3" squares that I made, and I arrange them around my buildings as sidewalks for my 54mm games. I used a slate gray color and they look just fine unpainted. A dioramist would probably disagree, but I'm a gamer. Pooh on dioramists.

I don't have any photos, but I can take some and post you photos if you like.

Jim