Recently I added some name boards to my various model railroad micro layouts.
I had purchased some MDF letters in a department store some time ago, before I actually started building the micro layouts I now have. And as I like to add name boards to my layouts, I thought I would use up as many letters as I could. My first task was to purchase some suitable water-based acrylic paint from the local hardware store. A nice semi-pale-ish yellow, called “Hello Yellow”.
Some of the letters I needed had already been painted, so I sand papered the paint off those. Then over about a week or so, I painted the letters for my Box Street, Petra Pizza and Pier 39 layouts.
The Box Street and Petra name boards were not a problem. But I didn’t have any numbers to make the “39” for a “Pier 39” name board. So instead of making the name board for that layout as “Pier 39”, I instead chose to make the name board “Brooklyn” instead. In the process of deciding to do that, it has also made the location represented by the Pier 39 layout less vague – previously I felt that the Pier 39 layout represented a Car Float served switching / industry area “somewhere in Manhattan or Brooklyn, NY”. Now that the sign actually says “Brooklyn” it firmly sets the location as, well, Brooklyn.
Here is the end result.
Over all, I think they have added a certain something to the layouts. To me, name boards always make a positive difference to a layout.
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