What would be the app. width in inches of a common “two lane blacktop” highway? ( 1950’s - 70’s) What products are the best for a surface and how do you obtain the look or weather the surface?
Just want to see ideas.
Larry
As for the width, about 4" will do. It does depend a lot on the part of the country and exact era as to shoulder practices and other details, but in our selectively compressed HO worlds, two 12’ or 14’ lanes will do fine - that works out to 3.86".
As for materials, plaster or cardstock work, paint, applyed with an airbrush, in several shades of grey, will usually give a good effect.
Sheldon
4 inches is what I use too.
Rich
I live in the South (Georgia). I am modeling the 60’s era where the GA RR ran and during that time Interstae Highways were a thing of the future. Ga Hwy 278 ran close to the Ga Route and it was a State maintained road.
Larry
I use foam board cut 3inch wide put down with acrylic caulk with 1/2 inch gravel shoulders on each side. Paint with your favorite concrete color. I use a fine point sharpie to put in the joint lines. I still need to put on my center lines. Weather with chalk or powders.
Why not use Google Maps to pull up Ga Hwy 278 (it still runs from outside of Cochran to Montrose and is called the Montrose Road) and measure it with the map scale? Measuring the satellite image at full magnification shows that 278 is a bit less than 25 feet across including the gravel berms. I’d think that would be good for modeling purposes. Depending on where the road is in the model, you could even narrow it down a couple of feet and still look prototypical.
Man, I guess I’m old. When I saw “Two Lane Blacktop”, the first thing that came to mind was the movie with James Taylor, Dennis Wilson (the drummer from the Beach Boys) and Warren Oates. No trains, but a great classic movie. If you want trains, check out the last minute of “Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry”.
Street Widths
Here in Anderson Indiana, each lane was about 12 feet wide. It was dependent upon the type of roadway (main street, residential or back country road, etc) but most business streets and highways were built at about 12 feet per lane. Earlier, in the twenties, roads were only about 20 feet wide total, so, if the portion of the town you wish to model was built in that era, a 20 foot roadway is fine.
If each lane were 10 feet wide, that would be 1 and 3/8s inch. So a two lane street would be 2 and 3/4 inches. 10 feet is what I use for the lanes of my city streets. Modern hiway lanes would be wider. Parking lanes would have been more narrow in the 50s, say 8 or 8 1/2 feet.
As a guide in HO:
&nbs
Roger-
Great information!
Thanks for your input.
Larry