Roads for Turay

Roads - they connect the model railroad to a piece of the world we are all familiar with. As such, having roads on a model RR is an important scenic element. That said, I find roads to be tedious. Too often I see them dropped in without context, looking like they are anything but pavement, or flat out cheesy looking. So I have been holding off making roads... until now. 

Turay sits on top of the helix. I wanted to use the space to tie in Armstrong and give the feel of a local center of population, without making it look like a big city. Think Las Vegas, New Mexico. So the city would have several key structures (more on that later), tied in with, you guessed it, roads.

The basis for the roads are sheet styrene. My daughter works retail, so she was able to score for me some relatively heavy signs they were throwing away. Yay! Unfortunately the backs had some kind of adhesive on them that made the 'clean' side unusable. The printed side had pricing info on it... oh well.

Next step was to cut the shape out. Turns out styrene is easily scored and snapped. I wanted to tie in all the pavement in the city: streets, parking lots, curbs and sidewalks, all on the same sheet to tie it all together. So I laid out the dimensions, scored with a straight edge and box knife, and in short order the roads themselves were properly sized. 

Next I went on to sidewalks. Bought a few packages of Walthers sidewalks, and glued them directly to the roadways in the proper location. The solvent cement did fine working right through the printing.

 

It occurred to me that roadways are really made up of two materials: concrete for more high-load areas, and asphalt for general service. Concrete is also used for sidewalks and gutters. An easy way to model this, I figured, was to spray all the 'concrete' areas a light tan, mask that off after it is dry, and then spray the 'asphalt' areas with a slate black. That is exactly what I did. 

For paint I used a Krylon "Camo" type of paint, allowing super flat finish and a solid covering of the sign. Good news/bad news. The Krylon dissolved some of the signage paint, creating cracks and crazing in the finish. Alas, after it dried, it left bare, white styrene exposed. What to do? Spray again! Which I did 3-4 times, before the underlying paint gave up. Serendipity prevailed! The cracks created a very realistic cracked finish on the roadways! 

Next, on to striping. In the past, I would mask and paint every stripe. Was a total pain, and did not enjoy the process. So this time tried something different. I looked up on line 1mm-2mm wide tape. Turns out there is a whole market for narrow striping... for fingernails! Well, what the heck. With a warning to my wife, I ordered a roll of yellow and white striping from a nail supply shop. This turned out to be useless stuff. Don't mess with it. Yes, it's the right width. But... transparent, does not stick well, and too shiny.  What to do? Next attempt got me to a whiteboard shop. Turns out they have all kinds of vinyl striping tapes for white boards... including 1/16" wide stuff. 

 This is a little wide for HO scale striping. But, wow, does it cover well. And it sticks. And it looks great! 

Looks like freshly laid and painted roadway!

Once thoroughly dried, I sprayed over the roads with the striping with Krylon Flat Enamel. This intends to seal everything up. 

Note the thin strip of 'concrete' on the street side of the sidewalks to represent gutter.

 

After that, I went over the roadways with a thin wash of water based acrylic paint to give the surface some weathering. The effects were pretty amazing!

With some thin washes of tan paint.

The results turned out better than expected! I included gutters and the intersection as concrete, with the rest of the area as asphalt. Ya, some will say, hey, what about the crown in the road? It's close enough for me!

Glued it down with caulk - and once solid, started to add buildings. Pretty happy with the results!

Ready for buildings, cars and trucks, and surrounding scenery!