What have I been doing today? Just getting a little road work done. After the plaster is dry, the molds will be removed and the surrounding scenery will be sloped upward toward the road surface.
Just a point, isn’t the road a little too wide, just compare it to the tracks, these are not major highways or a freeway are they?? great stuff, the city in the background gives me some ideas, thanks.
Shoulders are included.
I found some 3/16" thick weather stripping tape I used for road forms. I still wish I could find something about 1/8" thick. It’s a lot cheaper than the WS stuff.
For what it’s worth, many of the layouts I see have roads that are too narrow. For example, they’ll have enough room for two vehicles side-by-side, but no shoulder, and barley enough clearance to avoid clipping side-view mirrors.
Jeff’s roads look about right to me.
Looks good, Jeff. I would love to see completed pics when you have painted and all… I have roads to pour/make in a few months…
Brian
Is there going to be another crossing to the right in the first picture? It stops just before the tracks but it looks like there is a turnout there.
Jeff looks great, would like to see it finished. What are you going to have on the curved crossing. Im also ready for some roads but want to see your project first. Post a few pics when done…John
Agreed. I pave my HO Roads 6 inches wide.
However, a modern lane is 15-16 ft wide (wider on expressways). So my 44 ft wide road gives me really only 3 lanes, of which one gets divided in half to form shoulders. If a road is expected to have heavy truck traffic, it is often paved wider. And even with paved shoulders, more gravel space needs to be provided on each side.
Nice job Jeff. I can wait to see it with the lines painted/drawn/taped in.
The crossing area between the rails will be a simple piece of poster board. To the right of the pics the road will cross just behind a turnout to a station on the other side and in the other section it will cross between two turnouts. I have a place on another part of the layout where a road crosses part of turnout and it was a major PITA. At that crossing the ties and roadbed will simply be painted so it looks like a crossing.
I’m back again, sorry can’t agree with your road width comments, just set a scale auto on each side of the road and see just how much room you have, for some reason model railroaders tend to make roads far too wide, in the photos the width seems to be for a modern freeway, just compare the width of the tracks with the road.
Looks good !
Have you ever tried mixing color into the plaster
or does that retard the drying to much ?
At 3 1/2 inches it looks just about right to me. Here’s two 1:87 scale cars side by side.
I’ve tried mixing colors in with the plaster in the past. At best it was a hit and miss exercise on whether the color between pours would match perfectly. Most of the time it wouldn’t and I’d end up just painting over it anyway. So now I just pour it white and when it’s dry I seal it with shellac then paint it a brownish-black so it looks like asphalt.
Hey! [:)] You did what I was going to ask you to do! [:D]
Could you do the same with a couple of semis please? Maybe one turning on the junction?
TIA [:P]
Then again… I was horribly disappointed [sigh][sigh] When I saw the thread title I was eagerly looking forward to red and white horses, flares, a hole in the road, at least two dozen supervisors and one man with a shovel… [:-,]
Nice to see “work in progress” [8D]
Just had a thought [:-,]
I take it that you’ve laid the road in white because it was originally a concrete road laid in panels … and then the colours will be the tarmac that the city/county put on later…
So, before painting, how about marking out the panel joins with some slight grooves (maybe with a matchstick stuck in the surrounding countryside as a marker)… then you will know where to put some of the cracks in the tarmac… and maybe some potholes where the corner of the concrete panel has cracked/subsided.
Now you know why Iput in the [:-,] at the start! [(-D]
PS Which is more common in the US… streets like that with a camber to make the rain run off or a flat road? Does it vary by what the verge (oops!) shoulder is? Does it vary by region/State? TIA [8D]
If you’re in doubt, there is plenty of information available online to show what the standard width of roads should be based on their expected use.
You should drive some of the smaller highways in Missouri. They are just like that. If you had a flat, you’d have to drive, maybe, over a mile to find a place where there is enough room for you to pull over to change the tire.
In general, railroads take up much less space than do roadways. One of the benefits of using rail. However, I also feel that many modelers, myself included, skimp on the clearances and land for the railroad that is actually there.
Road width changes a lot based on when the road was last rebuilt. Around here, quite a bit of funding goes into State Highways, since the state picks up the buck for our non-existant counties. Most of the roads in my part (outer suburbs of Boston) are about standard with 15-16 ft lanes. At Fort Devens in Ayer, a popular railfan spot, the access road into the military facility is paved with lanes at least 20 ft wide, likely more. However, there are some remaining state highways, like MA-68 in Royalston, MA, that remain with at most 11-12 ft lanes with nowhere to pull over for miles. Most of the older arterial roads in my town remain at 11-12 ft, while the new developments that branch from them have 15-16.
The point is that road width is highly variable, and hinges upod multiple factors such as types of usage, when it was built, and the funding that was probably available. As long as you are in that range it should look realistic.
Jeff, nice job. The road width is in the right range for sure.
Dave, regarding your question about road drainage in the US:
Like road width, it depends on many factors. Older roads are more often flat.
However, this is not always true. For example, that recently repaved military access road with 20ft lanes is completely flat. I’m not sure if this has to do with military wear and tear.
On the opposite, a much older arterial road in my town that was originally flat was recently repaved. While they did not widen the lanes at all, they added a pretty steep drainage gradient. So it goes either way.
City roads often do have the gradient, making for pretty nice jolts at intersections where the perpendicular gradient must be crossed.
Hope it helps, though I guess some of it was obvious…yeah…[:)]