Building City Streets
Using Walthers Cornerstone Street
Systems
by Venita Lake
photos by Richard Schumacher |
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 The Gateway Division has used the Walthers Cornerstone street
systems on several of its annual project
layouts and the project we built for the History Museum.
These kits are available in red brick (933-3139)
or concrete (933-3138) for a list price of $12.98 and are
sections of street and sidewalks with curbs that
can be arranged in a various configurations to fit a city
scene. In HO scale, they contain approximately
25 linear inches of roadway in 10 interlocking straight
sections that are 3-5/8" long and 2-3/4" wide. Two
widths are joined by a straight riser, which forms a center
crown in the roadway. In addition, four 3-5/8"
x 3-5/8" sections can be used to create a four-way
intersection. Two curb cuts, one for a driveway and one
for an alley, two quarter circle street sections and
matching sidewalks, and manhole covers, sewer grates,
and fire hydrants complete the kit. A separate set of
straight sections containing only 8 sections of
streets with corresponding set of curbs is also available
(concrete, 933-3155; brick, 933-3156 @ $11.98).
In addition, street track inserts sized for code 83 track
including straight sections as well as pieces
for 15", 18" and 22" radius curves and parts for #4 and 18"
turnouts (933-3140 @ $15.98) and grade
crossings (933-3137 @ $6.98) complete the city look.
Directions and drawings for assembling the streets and
sidewalks are minimal, but relatively easy to
follow. Parts should be separated from the sprues, cleaned
of any remaining plastic flash, and test
fitted. As with most Cornerstone kits, painting is not
necessary but appearances are greatly improved by
painting and/or weathering. The brick streets improve
greatly with just a wash of India ink diluted with
alcohol. Use your own judgment about when to paint, either
before assembling the pieces or later in the
project. With our project layouts we were able to turn the
whole layout vertically and paint and weather
the assembled streets, a luxury you may not have with a home
layout. Careful gluing after painting
individual pieces or air brushing assembled sections of
street may be more successful.
 Thought must be given to how buildings and track fit in with
the streets. It is a question of what comes
first. For the History Museum project, we had an
intersection of concrete roadway, brick industrial
streets or alleys near the track, streets crossing the
tracks in several places, and a street going
downhill below the railroad underpass. For this project, we
started with the four-way intersection where
placement was determined by the large buildings and the
extensions to cross the tracks on three sides of
the layout. The fourth direction going toward the underpass
required that the top of the hill would start
at the joint between two sections of the road. We did not
try cutting sections for this joint. This
product probably would not work well with a lot of up and
down terrain and one must be careful about
creating unrealistic steep gradients.
 We worked from the intersection toward the track and cut the
sections of street adjacent to the track to
fit. The street sections can be cut with plastic "nippers"
and then filed or sanded. All of the street
sections were test fitted and decisions were made about
where manhole covers and sewer grates would be
installed. Openings must be cut into the street so that
manhole covers can be inserted from the bottom
side. Both the road and the curb are cut to install sewer
grates. Fire hydrants can be glued in later but
drilling may be easier at this stage.
The kit directions recommend using a plastic cement to glue
the plastic together. We found that it worked
well to glue the road halves to the risers and where
possible to glue several segments together before
attempting to attach them to the layout. Diagrams and
individual pieces should be carefully studied to fit
them together properly before applying the glue.
 There are tabs on the road segments to make them fit snugly.
Street pieces have a center side and a curb
side. Sidewalks and curbs must fit together the proper way
to provide the largest surface for glue.
Sidewalks also should be assembled into larger sections and
may be painted and weathered or ink washed
before they are attached to the street sections and glued
down to the layout.
The street sections can be glued down with a slow drying
epoxy or a white glue like Weld Bond that will
allow time to move pieces if necessary. We used a generous
amount of caulked construction glue to grip the
street pieces that are cupped for the center crown.
After the streets and sidewalks are installed, additional
weathering down the center of traffic lanes,
center lines, railroad crossing warnings painted on the
pavement, stop signs or traffic lights, pedestrian
crossing lines, and corner mail boxes are details that bring
the city street scene to life.
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