Sullivan Ave. part III

A detail that I like adding to urban roads is the sewer manhole cover. We have two types in the image below; the Sanitary Sewer manhole (MH) cover and the Storm Drainage MH cover. The larger of the painted ones is for Storm Drainage. These are made by Vector Cut, and if you are wondering, yes they are a little large for HO scale. But the detail on these is SO GOOD, that I will forgive the maker for the size issue. The one piece of Laser Board has 6 manhole covers and 3 storm grates.

My challenge is to create a shallow hole in the road surface that is just large enough to fit the MH cover. I used the hole left in the Laser board as a carving stencil on the road.

Here is the tool I used for the carving. If you look closely you will see that the curved blade has a slightly angled tip. There is blade on the other end with a blade angled in the opposite direction.

And the finished product. If you remember a couple of posts back where I mentioned a pavement patch where I had to blend where the road was made of Wood Filler on one part and Styrene on another part. This is that patch, I deliberately painted it a different shade from the remainder of the road. I just looks like the Sewer Maintenance crew tore up the road and patched it when they were done. I have also begun adding cracks in the asphalt surface. Here I am drawing the cracks with a

.3 mm drafting pencil.

This last image shows how nicely  the MH cover fits into the hole I created.