How many of you out have a turnpike modeled on your layout just woundering Because i work for the PA Turnpike .
I suppose most of us don’t have the room to model something like that, I think that most would say they concentrate on the railroad aspect rather than roads. We try to get stuff off the roads and on the rails [:)] But something like that maybe a short section crossing a layout would be interesting, sort of like a diorama within the layout.
I’ve seen many major roads positioned as bridges across layouts both to hide joints in the boards and as scenic breaks. best one had the turnpike toll booths with traffic backed up waiting to pay.
my plan is to use a combination of highway/freeway/turnpike overpass with curved and angled on/off ramps to lose the railroad line in and under where it goes off scene.
Somebody might have beaten me to the idea…?
One issue is the cost of cars and lack of variety within any one time period (80s in my case)… but I figure on getting round this by having a jack knifed truck and emergency services… making a mini diorama…
Have fun 
You can see a short stretch of the PA Turnpike and one of its many tunnels on this layout by Neal Schorr
The modern South Penn, 15x20 walk-in
Model Railroader, May 1990 page 78
( LAYOUT, “SCHORR, NEAL A.”, TRACKPLAN, HO, MR )
Lessons of the South Penn
Model Railroader, April 1997 page 112
( LAYOUT, “SCHORR, NEAL A.”, TRACKPLAN, HO, MR )
What’s a turn pike ?
Basically a toll-road. usually like an interstate in layout: two lanes each direction, divided, controlled access.
Don’t dismiss the idea of the turnpike and don’t listen to the “rails, not roads” gang. [:D]
If any highway deserves to be modeled on a layout, it’s the Pennsylvania Turnpike. After all, the original Turnpike was built on a roadbed and used tunnels originally built for a railroad.
While modeling a prototypical version of the Pennsylvania Turnpike involves a right-of-way that would measure over three feet wide in HO, there’s no reason not to model a short section of the turnpike. If you don’t model a toll plaza, it won’t take up that much space and you use can use selective compression on that 60-foot-wide median and the shoulders.
I believe the PA turnpike has four 12-foot-wide lanes, two in each direction, and that’s just about 6.6 inches in HO scale. I don’t remember the places where the turnpike crossed railroad tracks, but a bridge or overpass should work.
Depending on your era, vehicle models can be plentiful or rare. However, a short stretch of limited-access highway wouldn’t necessarily have that many vehicles (this is the PA Turnpike, not an LA freeway at rush hour) because at turnpike speeds there’s generally a fair amount of space between vehicles. You can also use large over-the-road tractor-trailer rigs to take up space. These are now available for almost any era except perhaps the first decade the Turnpike was open (it opened in late 1940). The new White Mustangs from Classic Metal Works and the Mack B models from Athearn will take care of the 1950s, there are Athearn Ford Cs and Mack Rs for the 1960s and a variety of trucks for the 1970s and later. If you encounter a shortage of American cars for your era, a couple of imports like VW Beetles will take care of some space for any time after about 1955.
Busch had a modern-era PSP Ford Crown Victoria in their state police series. It’s No. 49084. It’s sold out at Walthers but you might be able to find it at a hobby shop, swap meet or online.
MRR did a nice article on modeling a highway goingunder their tracks. it was last fall I think. i can get you the issue later on today but it looked rather simple.
Hi Srud01
Any employee free passes? I drive it from the Jersey turnpike out to Fort Littleton a few times a month.
Greg[;)]
While I’ve seen such represented a few times on modern-era layouts, in nearly all cases of those modeling the highly popular transition-era period or those of an earlier time period, turnpikes would be quite inappropriate…and that probably amounts to nearly half of all modelers out there.
I can personally recall a time in my youth when the only true “turnpike” in my entire region of the country was the Pennsy Pike and all those northeastern and mid-Atlantic “Thruways” were nothing but a distant dream. There was no great push for building huge free or toll-road turnpikes prior to the Eisenhower presidency, so turnpikes are really only common enough to be appropriate for pikes representing the post-1970 era.
CNJ831
Yea there is a lot of history with the turnpike i work down towards the Valley Forge area were starting to make it three lanes each way out to downingtown in the next coulple of years
Well, not quite. The push for better roads began before the car. The first federal agency, the Office of Road Inquiry (part of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture) was authorized in 1893. Federal post roads were designated in 1913 and the Federal Road Aid Act was passed in 1916. Multi-lane federal highways have been around a long time. The 4-lane Lincoln Highway with its 110-foot right-of-way, opened in December 1923. By then, New York City had already begun building its system of parkways (construction started in 1907).
The Federal-Aid HIghway Act of 1938 authorized the Bureau of Public Roads, the successor to the Office of Road Inquiry, to investigate the construction of a coast-to-coast superhighway system. There was plenty of public support and thousands of people were enthralled by the “1960” highway system displayed in the GM Futurama at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
The National Interregional Highway Committee was appointed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 and reported on the feasibility of constructing and upgrading 34,000 miles of highways to superhighway standards. The first funding for this system was approved in 1944 with $500 million to be spent in each of
A good Transition Era scene might be the construction of a turnpike. That would be suitable for anytime from before World War II to the late 1950s. There are lots of pictures of road construction and plenty of information on the Internet.
Bill C.
Why do they call the large (what I’d call a toll road or a freeway out here in the west) 4+ lane roads in the east “TURNPIKES”?!?!?!? please provide the etmyology!
The name originally comes from barriers that were used back in the late middle ages. Long spears called pikes were mounted on moveable gates as a defensive measure against cavalry charges.
When toll roads were built in the eighteenth century, entries would have a wooden barrier (without the sharp spears) that turned on a vertical pin to bar passage until the toll was paid. The barrier became known as a “pike” and it was turned to allow use of the road, so the term “turnpike” came into being as another name for a toll road.
Bill - Save for the most congested urban areas of the east and west coasts, true “turnpikes” were uncommon until around 1970. During the 1960’s one could travel great distances across America without encounting such grand constructions. Even in the highly urbanized northeast they weren
CNJ831,
I was born in the late 1940s and I remember driving through lots of countryside on turnpikes in the 1950s when we traveled. This included the Indiana, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania Turnpikes. Kansas also opened its turnpike in the mid-1950s.
If you look at a map of the 530.5-mile-long Pennsylvania Turnpike, you will see it travels through rural as well as built-up areas. This means srud01 has a wide variety of scenery options if he wants to add a piece of it to his layout.
Sure, there were plenty of smaller roads. I said that in my original post. If you pick your routes, it’s still possible to travel great distances without encountering a toll road of any type. In fact, it’s even possible to avoid the Interstate. But the srud01 started this thread by asking if anyone had modeled a turnpike because he works for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which opened in 1940.
Based on his comments in other threads, srud01 likes to run modern and older trains. I don’t know how much older he likes but he doesn’t seem to be focused on the Transition Era. But it doesn’t matter; he can run steam or diesel and be okay with the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Incidentally, I checked my facts before I posted my first comments and did even more research before I responded your original comment. IMHO, if one is going to make recommendations as to what is prototypical or justified, they should make sure their advice is based on the best information available.
Bill C.
Well Bill, your areas of travel must have been most unusual relative to the far more populated and urbanized NE. I was a licenced driver in the 1950’s and travelled widely. Anything worthy of the name of a multi-lane turnpike was a rare commodity indeed and I recall most of them being built and riding on them when they first opened. By very late in the decade you could travel the NY Thruway, Mass Pike, and Jersery Turnpike. By the 1960’s
here in boston they tell us that the mta turnpike is all paid no more toll then they sell it to someone and start the toll up again we have been paying for our toll bridge for 100 years
K
Tolls are too high on the PA Turnpike. I drive through Altoona instead.