I’m laying out a road in a major urban area on my layout, which is set in the mid-1950s. I’ve seen a couple references in books that suggest that up through the 1950s most roads were paved with concrete rather than asphalt but I haven’t been able to really confirm this definitively. Does anyone know when asphalt started coming into general use? Thanks.
I think a lot of that depends on location, in west Texas when I was much younger, I never saw a concrete road. All were asphalt. But this is just location specific.[:D]
Location, age, and population density undoubtedly counts heavily in this situation for many places around the country. Concrete streets and even cobblestones were very common up to about 1950 or so in many eastern cities and concrete was used for virtually all major highways, parkways, etc. I believe that, in many cases, resurfacing/replacement with asphalt was held back until the demise of the trolleys and recovery from WWII, as I do recall mass resurfacing with asphalt about that time here in the Northeast. On the other hand, I also remember tar and gravel, as well as asphalt, dominating in the more rural areas.
CNJ831
Yes, it’s going to depend on location. In my home town in southern Illinois the state highways were all concrete and city streets were scarified and oiled yearly. Pre-mixed asphalt wasn’t used anywhere. The state highways that passed through the center of town were concrete that had been poured during the Roosevelt admiinistration as WPA projects.
I believe that I’m right in thinking that concrete roads were laid in large panels rather than the continous slip-paving used today. does anyone know what size the largest panels were? In the UK at least many concrete panel and stone set /cobble roads were simply overlaid with tarmac. This had two effects… after a short period the original joint lines between the panels reaapeared in the tarmac… when unsuspecting utility companies came along planning to dig up an easy tarmac road they ran through into solid rock paving that had to be busted out with great effort.
Hope this helps.
Concrete was layed in sections to allow for expansion during the summer months. If the panels were too close together, “buckling” would occur and whole sections would lift up and crack.
I never remember even seeing asphalt until the mid '60s. Up until then it was either concrete, tar and gravel (and there were a LOT of these that today are asphalt), or dirt.
A great deal of the decision on paving material depended on local climate conditions. In the Northeast and upper Midwest concrete was used to deal with the expansion and contraction of road ways as the temperature extremes both hot and cold lead to asphalt deteriorating too quickly unless frost depth was addressed from the onset of the highway construction. Overtime the cost of asphalt paving over a stable concrete base of existing roadways made it both more prevelentand more economical to see asphalt resurfacing.
The milder climate of the west & gulf coasts leant them selves to faster & more economical road building with asphalt from the outset. The proximity of the petrochemical industry along the coasts also impacted the economic aspects of the selection process.
Will
Diffenately depends on location,here in northeast,I grew up in the Hudson Valley region and some streets in cities and even a section of Rte 9, (a major route), were cobblestone through the sixties, most were concrete, some sections got blacktopped in sixties, county and town roads were tarred and graveled.You should be able to do a combination of all of them, and it’ll look right.
Both were in use in the 50’s here in New England. As mentioned by other already, it depends upon the area. So if you are modeling a “generic” RR, do as you please. If you are modeling a section of an actual 50’s RR, and you want it prototype, then check with town/city Highway records to see what the highway was paved with at that time.
I remember when the street car track was pulled up on 40th street in Omaha, it was repaved with asphalt and this was sometime in the mid-1950s. In my expierience, I have seen very few concrete surfaces. Even those that were originally laid down with concrete got asphalt when it was time to resurface them. Only on totally new streches of highways have I seen concrete.
Growing up in ‘Da Bronx,’ New York (I graduated from high school in the mid-'50’s), the local residential streets were either smooth asphalt (great for roller skating) or macadam (the notorious ‘tarmac’ that airport ramps aren’t made of any more - graveled-over tar.) The major through routes were concrete, while the street under the IRT elevated was still Belgian block.
Hope this helps.
Chuck
Since a lot of you have asked about location, the street in question would be in Chicago. Sounds like this would have been done in concrete in the 1950s.
BTW, how would you model gravel over tar? Would you use N-scale gray ballast?
If I was going to model Middletown Road as seen from my bedroom window, I would start with medium-grit garnet paper, drill out some irregular holes in paper and base, fill them with blobs of black paint and press in some good-size sand. The result would be pretty close in HO. In N scale, use finer grit and HO ballast.
Riding a bike on Middletown Road was an adventure!
Chuck
When paving started in the Midwest, it was with cobblestones (bricks, really) and reserved for main drags in urban areas. The first hard surface roads were concrete, generally 7-9 feet wide per lane. By the 1920s, asphalt was being used as a cheap alternative to concrete, especially on state “highways”.
I’ve got train orders for the 1930s and 1940s from the TP&W, which all deal witht he railroad laying temporary sidings along the right of way to park asphalt tank cars on. The county or state road crews would pull up to the siding, fill their tankers with the asphalt, and start laying it on the road they were working on. They laid the asphalt over everything in their path: dirt, gravel, cobblestones, and even concrete roads. When they ran past the sidings too far, the temporary track was removed and laid further down the line. Apparently, this sort of activity happened all over the place in Illinois from the 1930s to the early 1950s.
Any chance of some pics of these train orders please? It would be fantastic.
When you say “…anything in their path…” that included chickens, sleeping dogs… right?
Unfortunately, I recently moved, and so most of my RR paperwork is still buried. But the orders were just general train warnings, for some reason written as form 19s. Most read something like “Cut of loaded tank cars on siding El Paso”, or “Track gang installing new siding Crandall reduce speed to one zero MPH be prepared to stop”. Get enough of them together and add a couple of general orders, and you’ve got a trend.
As for paving over turtles and things, I don’t doubt that it did occasionally happen! I’ve seen central Illinois paving jobs that have run over curbs, completely around lamp posts and mailbox posts, and over manhole covers! Those paving guys don’t seem to care what they pave over!
If I have my facts straight, not only were roads different in the 40s, but signs were too! Example; Stop signs were yellow up until the 60s.
Is that so?
People just shouldn’t leave those things laying about! [;)]
I have a (printed on plastic) sign from where I used to live … the local authority changed the street lights… so a week before put up signs warning of the work and requiring people not to park within 50 metres (162’) of poles spaced about 100 metres apart… neat planning in a residential area of London next to a major Hospital and three passenger rail stations. Naturally they did the work on a different day from that posted…
Such is life. [:p]
Yep: road signs, painted lines and curbs, even the very engineering of road surfaces was much different 40-90 years ago. It’s best to do a little research on just about every aspect of a historically-based layout before working on it, just to make sure you’re not too far off the mark!