Building sidewalks and curbs from styrene as you have the roads shouldn't be too difficult.  For the sidewalks you could cut some thicker styrene into strips and then round one edge using sandpaper.  Once that's done you can use a ruler and the back side of hobby knife blade to scribe the expansion lines.  An expansion line scribed a few mm parallel to the edge can represent the curb.  

Jason, I've had fairly good luck on diorama's with either cutting the road and sidewalk into blueboard, and scribing the expansion joints. Paint with Woodland Scenic concrete topcoat, age with chalk and instant sidewalk. On existing surfaces I use the styrofoam from meat trays or the tops of egg cartons, depending on brand you may have to layer them, it's a little thin. Doug Foscale, one of our sponsers here has a series of DVD's out, the first one MODEL RAILROADING DETAILS AND SCENERY   has a great lesson on sidewalks. Also Lou Sassi's How to Build & Detail Model Railroad Scenes availible from Kalmbach has a chapter on making a suburban scene, including sidewalks.

Standard disclaimer YMMV, and I have no connection to any of the companies mentioned other than being a very happy customer.

Thanks Marc,

Thats what I was considering will do some test pieces and see how it looks...

Cheers,

Jason... 

Thanks Sully,

I will look out for the DVD's and the book. I like your blue board idea would be nice and quick and not to much fuss.  I have some Polyscale "concrete", is there a difference between that and the Woodlands "Concrete Topcoat", I've seen it used on this forum before as a base coat for a concrete loading ramp.

Interesting idea using the meat trays and egg cartons, simple things are often the best solution!  I also have a look at these and see how they work.

Cheers,

Jason...

Jason, I haven't had much luck with the Polyscale on foam, it just seems to get sucked into the surface, and never use a solvent based paint on plastic foam, unless you like filling craters.  After all, thats how they make polyurethane varnish, melt urethane in a solvent..  The WS Concrete Topcoat comes in a fairly large bottle (4 oz) and is availible for $4.99 from another of the sponsors, Scenic Exspress.

The meat trays can be used in alot of ways. I first saw it mentioned in a 60's era MR. but I saw it used on a club layout recently, they had a curved brick retaining wall, the actual curve was structural, part of the benchwork, and they covered it with foam with a brick pattern drawn on with a rounded pencil. once it was painted and weathered you wouldn't know it wasn't brick for real. Sorry, rambling long day..

I guess I should have told you the name of the vender of the DVD's Doug Foscale and his wife Anna Marie are the owners of FOS Scale LTD. and from what I've been able to gather the pun was intended.

 The Bachman City Scenes kits from a decade ago came with about  40" of sidewalks and separate rounded corners.  Several kits gave me almost enough to do my entire city.  Almost.  I then found that I could duplicate them pretty easily by simply scribing the joints in styrene.  I purchase 1/16" material eight square feet at a time cut into 12" x 24" for transportation. There's a chain of plastic supply stores in the San Francisco Bay Area called Tap Plastics but I pretty sure most urban areas would have similar.  It takes two layers of the material to get a suitable thickness. Scribing curbs on the rounded corners is well beyond my skill set but happily I discovered that styrene strips from Evergreen (.060x .100) make excellent curbstones.

it's odd, becuase I could have sworn that I had to replied to this, but I don't see the post.

With plastic, if you worry the edge of the plastic curbing with a hobby knife in certain, select spots, you can duplicate chipping and cracked off parts for a more worn look.

I find that important, as the biggest drawback, in my opinion, to using styrene is it's clean uniformity.

Scarpia,

Your mind isn't playing tricks, and you didn't walk through a rift in the space time continumum either!  You replied in our Blog Thread "model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/2628".  But I sincerely appreciate your effort on replying twice though...... :)

Jason...

Ha! so it's just old age then....Cheers!

I've had excellent results from building forms from basswood then pouring Durham's Water Putty. Once it's set up, but before it's hard, scribe the cracks into it with the backside of a #11 hobby knife and a steel ruler. Building forms and pouring lets you adapt the sidewalk to the location. It's especially good for tapering the curb down to street level at grade crossings.

For concrete painting instructions, go to http://www.trolleyville.com/tv/school/lesson6_3/ and scroll down about 3/4 of the way. I co-wrote this article. There's also a companion article about asphalt paving at http://trolleyville.com/tv/school/lesson6_4/ .

Regards,

Charley