Pictured: The zincs are cut to the correct length and then painted.
Railroad modelers who live in the Caribbean and model local areas are blessed with palm trees. Those big branches just fall off the tree crying for attention. With a ruler, a marker and a pair of scissors, you can roof an entire model building using one palm.
That is right. Determine the scale you want to work in. Ho is 1:24, which means ½ inch equals 1 foot. If you use metric, 1 foot is 3.5 mm.
The base of the palm makes great corrugated roof material. The average zinc is about 3 x 10 feet. Use your ruler. Mark out several panels and start cutting. Then a quick spray of paint and you’re ready to go. I used blue paint, as that is the colour of my roof. But you can use red, silver or any colour you like.
Let the paint dry and you are ready to glue the roof on.
To start, simply decide the size roof panels you want. Zinc comes in different sizes and colours. I picked 3 x 10 feet. In O scale, ¼ inch equals 1 foot. Three feet in O scale is ¾ of an inch, and 10 feet is 2.5 inches.
HO scale is ½ inch equals 1 foot; your single piece of zinc would be .41 x 1.38 inches.
Next, I mark several sections out on the end of the palm. I usually use a pencil, but for this example, I used a black magic marker so you could visualize the pattern.
Finally, I sit down with a cup of coffee and start cutting. When I am done cutting and painting, I put the zincs in piles of usually five to 10 pieces and zip-tie them together with thin, black tie-wraps. Later, I will decide if I want to make more houses to roof or just pile the zincs up at one of the construction sites on the layout.
If you do not like the palm zincs, you can always use cardboard for your flat-top roofs and then paint them grey. If you sprinkle a little fine sand into the paint, it makes it look like the roof is made of concrete. When I want to make a shingle roof, I use the black roofing felt. Shingles are normally about 12 x 36 inches. So, I cut the felt and just glue it on, overlapping each course.
Until next time, I hope to see your roofs going up around the tracks.
