I love these threads! [:)] This time, I’ve found a road that looks like the so-called “too narrow” roads found on many model railroads! This small country road in my hometown has lanes of only about 7’ wide. Most vehicles barely fit in their own lane, and large vehicles like dump trucks take up most of both when they’re passing a bike! (don’t ask why I know this!)
Here’s a photo, with my bike for a size comparison. NO image manipulation on this one - this is real!
…and it still has a yellow center stripe.
Some concession roads up here are quite narrow----then again, we have a bridge on Sarnia Road here in London that crosses over the CP here that can only allow 1 lane at a time across—at a 90 degree angle TO the road----
I really have to get the camera out and do dese t’ings----[:-^]
Any resemblance to the county roads I used to drive in rural Tennessee is purely …
(Those Tennessee roads had a habit of running sidehill - rock face on one side, a guardrail and a drop into the creek on the other.)
Of course, except for the one paved road that more or less paralleled the JNR, the roads in my prototype area were goat trails…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - where the OP road would have been considered a highway)
Hasn’t everybody travelled on roads so narrow vehicles can only pass at periodic turnouts or at least where cars slow to a crawl while getting as close to the cliff/precipice as possible? Oh, the joy of driving backwards up a narrow, winding road along a steep, unprotected precipice to allow the uphill vehicle to pass at turnout! If not, they haven’t lived. And then there is the joy of single-lane bridges. Or landslides that have wiped out half the road, sometimes becoming so permanent that timed signal lights are installed to control the resulting one-way-at-a-time traffic.
Just model these in the correct context.
Mark
Ah yes, the narrow country road. You want one-lane paved (or un-paved roads), come out here to California and take a trip up to the Sierra Nevada, especially in Nevada and Sierra counties. Terrific, prime examples, usually on a side-hill with a 700 or so foot drop into one of the forks of the Yuba River.
Used to be you could be going uphill and meet a logging truck racing downhill. Which meant backing up along a cliff until you could squeeze the car into a spot wide enough for the logging truck to maneuver around. Now that logging is not a prime industry up in these parts, you now have to worry about is Mr. & Mrs. Idiot Tourist and their RV: “Excuse me, but could you tell me the quickest way to Sacramento?” “Yah, rent a HELICOPTER! How in blazes did you get THAT thing up here to begin with?”
In honor of our one-lane country roads, I built one out of Wagon Wheel Gap heading to Allegheney (yes, there is a town in California called Allegheney!) [:P] One lane, oil-on-gravel paved. Here’s a logging truck coming down and a car coming up. Frankly, I don’t want to think of the possibilities. [swg]
And yes, I haven’t lined the tunnel yet. [:-^]
Tom [:)]
I know many of those. One of my favorites was the road to Cripple Creek. There was a one lane tunnel from the old Midland days you had to pass. There was a light at each end so you had to hope the other person obeyed the light. Don’t know if it’s still there since Cripple Creek became a casino town. Of course that doesn’t include some of the other “sound horn before curve” roads out there.
Well, here in the rural/suburban Mid Atlantic, we still have lots of narrow country roads, and lots of one lane bridges over creeks and streams. Many such bridges are still link and pin iron bridges build in the early 20th century. Several are just a few miles from here, including one wooden covered bridge.
And, we have quite a few underpasses where roads go under railroads that are only one lane and date to the 1880’s. The railroads built bridges over existing counrty roads based on the size of the road at that time. The railroad is not legally obligated to widen them. State and local government must bare the cost if they want them widened, so many of them stay one lane.
Sheldon
The road going down to Hawks Nest Bridge in the New River Gorge of WV (current CSX, former C&O/Chessie) is just like this. Backing up while nose-to-nose with a massive dual axle pickup truck hauling a boat out of the gorge is also a joy. At least the road pictured above is paved–I am still looking for the teeth I lost driving down into the gorge. Jamie
And I’m in a city with a one lane bridge sited at a 90 degree angle to the road it is on!! In a much more built up area—the traffic on Sarnia Rd is pretty heavy and if a truck bashes one of the abutments —well it is out for a week or so----leaving everyone wandering around new subdivisions going —“where’d I go? Where’d I go?”
My favorite “scary” road is the one leading to Florence Lake in the central Sierra Nevada. I’m sure it was created to provide transport to create several “High Sierra” reservoirs for the making of electricity. The San Joaquin and Eastern RR, using geared locomotives, never made it so far. (Thank you Edison Co.) If my memory serves, it goes over Kaiser Pass. For the toughest, all-paved route over the Sierras, my vote is Sonora Pass. There were/are two short stretches where I had to use first gear in the VW bug to make it.
Mark
Aaaaahhhh. I’ve taken the Florence Lake “ferry” at least for 4 to 5 round trips for backpack trips into the High Sierra (Evolution Valley, Goddard Canyon, Muir Pass, and such). In earlier days (1960s), it was merely an aluminum row boat with an outboard. Good memories there.
http://www.scaruffi.com/monument/hikes07/piute.html
Mark
The fellow’s photos of the road to Florence Lake shows it has now been paved and somewhat widened. I remember the road as narrower and made of rocks and sand. Gee…wilderness has been whittled away. It was better before the modern environmental movement. (I left the Sierra Club nearly fourty years ago because it broadened its scope beyond protecting the Sierra Nevada to more diffuse country and worldwide issues.)
Mark
Well, I had meant a prototype for the narrow regular roads…paved, with a center line down the middle that are in regular places (i.e. not on the side of a mountain) that modelers built too narrow, but I have enjoyed your stories! We have some one-lane underpasses around here, but none of what like Tom posted!
Be careful not to run into the backdrop about 12 feet in front of you !!!
(don’t ask me how I know this! [:-^] )