I plan to build roads on my layout using sheet styene using the article in the April 2005 MODEL RAILROADER (and, please, noone try to talk me out of it by saying “use this method” or “this method is easiest” or anything. I’m disabled, I’ve seen all other methods, and this seems to be the easiest one). My question is, how wide should the roads be for N scale? In the article, it says two and three-quarter inches to allow for curb-side parking, but I’m modeling a big city, and I don’t want curb-side parking.
I read somewhere that the average roads are 24’ wide. And that depends on the era that you are modeling. For HO scale, that comes to about 3.25 inches wide. To get that figure, divide 24/87 (HO scale is 1/87th). That will give you the width in scale feet. To convert to inches, multiply x 12. Just replace the “87” with whatever scale “N” scale is.
I made most of my N scale highways about 24’ wide (about 1 3/4"). It looks just about right with a vehicle in each lane. This doesn’t include the gravel shoulders on the sides. Nor does it allow sufficient space for parked cars on the edge of the pavement. I should have made the road through the town a bit wider–vehicles are going to have to go over the centre line to get around parked cars. You might want to try drawing a road, with a centre line, on paper and setting some cars on it and see how it looks. Try a few different widths to see how it looks. That’s how I came up with the 24’ width before I found out it seems to be the most popular. One thing to remember. We often employ selective compression in our modelling because we just don’t have the vast amounts of real estate that nature has to model everything full size. Our model roads can be narrower than real ones without looking out of place.