After buying an inexpensive gallon of mistinted paint at the hardware store, I’m finally getting rid of the “pink pavement” look of the DC extruded foam insulation on top of my layout. (See Avatar picture at left for reference.) With the pink nearly gone now, the painted surfaces (3-4 coats thick) really accentuate some of the bareness of certain sections. I’m now looking to add some more scenery to my layout.
With that said, I’ve begun to mull over what type of roads to put on my layout. My era is the early 40s, at a small NYC freight depot and steam/diesel fueling facility in NY state. At a facility of this sort and the time era given:
How prevalent was asphalt used for roadways before and during the war?
How about gravel?
Would it have been more likely to be just dirt roads back then?
What condition would dirt roads have been in? Would they still have “ruts” from the narrow tires or wheels of Model Ts and horse-drawn wagons?
Could areas (e.g. the truck loading zone bases at depots) have been concrete at that point and time? Or, is that something that you would be more likely to find at a bigger, more modern facility?
I’m sorta leaning towards putting in dirt roads. But it would also be nice to perhaps have an “updated” look (for the given time) to certain areas of the layout. (My early diesel fueling platform is concrete.)
Anyhow, many thanks ahead of time for the help and insight…
Very. Asphalt roads were around before concrete roads. To be completely true to history, the Byzantines were building asphalt roads at about 1500 BC (there are a few preserved in Iraq). But to get to your time period, asphalt roads were being laid in the 1920s, and laid like mad during the 1930s. Concrete roads lasted longer, and Federal programs like the paving of Route 66 was done with concrete. But the Lincoln Highway was basically all asphalt by the mid-1920s, and that was a state-by-state funded project.
Asphalt roads were really easy to lay, and railroads helped. I’ve found lots of evidence from the 1940s and 1950s of midwestern roads moving spurs along with road paving crews, to spot asphalt tank cars along the ROW. The road crews were paving parallel county roads which would kill off most class ones and all passenger service in this country.
Very common, especially in rural areas with low traffic density. And in NY state, in the far reaches you’d find SLATE roads. There are still a few way up in the mountains of PA and NY, all with “proceed at your own risk” signs.
No. By WWI, the auto was fully accepted into the fabric of the United States. Free mobility meant that the general public demanded better roads, and by the Depression, dirt roads were rare east of the Mississippi. You can still find a few today, but they’re basically unheard of. Dirt roads are a horse & buggy thing, or maybe a chain drive Mac truck thing.
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What condition would dirt roads have been in? Would the
Hey Tom
I know in the CNY region they would waterbound macadam pavement. As early as 1902 this system was used in the little town of Marcellus(pop. more dairy cows than people)By the 1914 some roads would get concrete base with a 2"bituminus topping.As fars as secondary roads, macadam would be the meathod.Heres a link what macadam is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macadam
Wow! Thanks for the boat load of information! [:)][tup] It’s just amazing that the more you get into MRRing, the more you realize how much more there is to know about it.
Anyway, to answer your question: A small and medium-sized wooden freight depot. From what you are saying, a cinder parking lot would make perfect sense. I also wondered about asphalt because I wasn’t sure - since it’s a petroleum product - that the production and/or rationing of it wouldn’t have been affected by WWII. (Come to think of it, my dad did work in the 30s on a road crew in southern OH, during the summers, to work his way through medical school.)
Now I have some things to think about. Thanks again, Ray! [:)]
Good to hear from you. Thanks for the info and link on macadam. I’ve never heard of the stuff before. Wish they had put a diagram of it on the Wikipedia link but I think I can imagine it enough in my head.
See you on Friday night at the club meeting? I found out from MS Streets and Trips that the Blissfield MRR Club roadtrip is only a 2-1/2 drive from Bill’s garage, not 3-1/2, as Bill suggested. I’m not entirely sure but I may try to go.
Digging back into my childhood memories for this, so no guarantee of accuracy. The reference is to southern New York - within approximately 60 miles of “Da Bronx.”
State routes and US highways would have been either smooth asphalt or large-slab concrete. The concrete slabs were cast separately and bitumin was poured into the spaces. After a few seasons, the bitumin would work up and form ridges on the concrete adjacent to the joints (which also had no incentive to remain aligned in level.) Worked better than speed limit signs to keep speeds down.
A common system for constructing secondary roads was macadam - coarse gravel with a road tar overlay. Some of the gravel was REALLY coarse - like the rock used to assure drainage in septic fields. Combined with the narrow tires of the day it made you think the car had square wheels - another serious disincentive to speeders.
Secondary streets and county roads were often surfaced with plain gravel, as were parking areas and off-road maneuvering areas used by trucks and such.
Alleys, minor lanes and farm access roads were frequently dirt, sometimes “improved” by a single application of gravel which had largely disappeared into the “frequent” mud. The horse-drawn wagon was not yet history (not even in New York City,) and the successors to the Model T had tires
Back in Cache Valley, Utah, many of the secondary roads were oil/asphalt covered with a thin layer of crushed gravel. Some of those roads are still maintained that way, as was one between Hyrum and Logan I travelled just 2 years ago. Now, of course these are connecter roads, not the main drag, but it’s still possible to find some like that today.
When I lived there, from '61 to '76, they were quite common. The only time you saw a dirt road was one that connected from a farm house to a paved surface, or that went between fields, farms, etc.
Thanks everyone for you helpful contributions so far. Okay, a few more questions for the panel:
When asphalt roads first came on the scene in the US, how far along was it before center lines were marked?
Would a “dashed line” then roughly have the same spacing as it is today?
Would it be safe to say that a US rural road in the late 30s/early 40s could have been marked but may not have?
When would they have started to mark grade crossings with the white line that kept cars at a safe distance from the tracks?
Sorry to pepper you with more questions. But since this thread made it to the top again, I thought I’d take advantage of it’s position on the forum. [:)]
…and probably most of the “Western” world - and “colonies”. Even with some surfacing the different seasons would be far more noticeable on the roads. (Don’t forget that - because of the relative cost and novelty of cameras and film - far more pictures were taken in summer and good weather than at other times… put another way the % of bad weather pics then to today would be very dofferent).
Roads wold still be subject to washouts, water cutting gulleys across, along or all over the place. Sometimes drains were laid where water could be most predicted… more like culverts than drains. These could block with consequences… They could be crushed by just a single vehicle that was too heavy. If a culvert was strong (like a steel pipe) it could survive better than the surrounding road and become a ridge across the road… or a step with one side lower than the other. (usually where the road is dropping downhill) Negotiating these sorts of features is interesting today - imagine what it would be like with the old tall wheels and narrow tyres…
Talking of which… in more than one book I’ve read of people being impressed or ot
Sherriff Joe (Maricopa County including Phoenix) still has chain gangs doing road cleanup work. In black and white striped convict uniforms to boot. Gotta earn their green baloney sandwiches. Traveling through the south while in the service during the 1940’s there were chain gangs everywhere.
The P&LE RR (essentially NYC) freight depot in Beaver Falls PA (built around 1905) was paved in brick. Brick was used for paving quite a bit around here, perhaps because of the ready supply.
(BF had a population of 16,500 in 1920, if that helps set your city scale.)
When I was a kid in the “40’s”, I lived in a little town in southern Ill. Most of the downtown streets were either concrete or asphalt. Most of the residential streets were dirt. Every now and then they would come along and lay down a layer of cinders and then cover that with a layer of oil. The street I lived on had a lot of kids and the neighborhood got together and prevented the city from filling the potholes thereby slowing all the cars down. We maintained our own traffic control.
Many streets here in Endicott, N.Y. have brick pavers under the layers of blacktop. Since brick was commonly used in all the factories around here it also was in the streets. A lot of concrete was alos poured during the Great Depression, by WPA crews.
State roads would probally be painted with white lines,and no fog lines on sides
Many streets in and around Pittsburgh were brick…even into the 1980s. Some still are, but many have been resurfaced. Too bad, since the brick usually lasted a million times better than asphalt. I think the reason for that was we had a huge clay supply, and brickworks were all over the place.
