1:35 Silniční patníky

The small thing that finally turns a surface into a road

The white stones along a verge are among the elements nobody notices until they are missing. Yet it is exactly they that tell the viewer where the roadway runs, where it ends and how wide it actually is. Set at a regular spacing, they create a rhythm that draws the eye into the distance, so that even a shallow scene suddenly gains space. For the builder it is one of the simplest ways to give a scene depth.

The contents are fifteen plaster castings and wooden accessories. The combination of materials makes sense: stone marker posts suit plaster, while the wooden elements stand in for the timber ones that lined roads where stone was not worth using. The plaster can be reworked with abrasive paper, which is useful when one stone is meant to be scuffed or knocked over.

How a layout looks convincing

• keep the spacing regular, but not measured to the millimeter
• tilt one or two pieces, as though a vehicle had caught them
• suggest the soil that always collects at the foot
• set the stones more closely on the outside of a bend than on a straight

The finish starts with white, but a purely white marker post looks untrue. Toning it down to a grayish shade works well, dirtying the lower part with dust from the roadway and lightly brightening the top edge instead, because that got rubbed the most. The elements are dimensioned for 1:35 scale. Put the stones in place only once the road surface is finished, otherwise filler is hard to spread around them and the transition to the verge will stay untidy.