Road materials

[ebtbob]

Good Morning All,

      I am working on part of my HO/HOn3 railroad's scenery.   I have a small town,  not way out in the sticks type town that sits along a portion of my HOn3 mainline.   It is time to do the one street....what would it have been made out of in the late 1950s or very early 1960s?

[fieromike]

It depends a bit upon your town's coffers.  There is always dirt, but the dust is not welcome, so small towns used caliche or just oiled the dirt or gravel.
Moving up, they used asphalt and concrete, but concrete was/is much more expensive than asphalt.  Everything pretty much the same as now.

Mike

[Jim Banner]

I was working on a seismic crew in the early sixties and lived in a lot of small towns around southern Alberta.  They virtually all had asphalt pavement on the main street and sometimes on a few of the more important side streets.  Otherwise their side streets were graveled with the more important ones oiled to keep the dust down.  Main street in a lot of these towns ran past the railroad station and grain elevators on one side of the street and usually had the town's businesses (gas station, post office, general store and hotel) on the other side of the street.  Many times main street was a secondary or tertiary provincial highway running through town, so it was probably the provincial government picking up the tab for the pavement, not the municipality.  (Western Canadian municipal districts are much like counties in the US.)

There were very few dirt roads except for some bush trails and seismic lines.  Many of these were passable only in the driest part of summer and the coldest part of winter.  There were also some abandoned gravel roads which had "gone back to nature" and looked a lot like dirt roads.  These were passable even in the wet season.  Woe betide the fool who confused one with the other.

Jim

[NarrowMinded]

I grew up in southern California South of Los Angeles, all the streets were either asphalt or concrete. My parents would drive across country to Michigan every other summer, I remember the roads when passing through towns as mentioned above, the MAIN street through town was usually paved, I seem to remember a lot of concrete main streets, with a few two lane cross streets paved with a mix of asphalt or concrete, one detail I would include is that the paved part from the main street usually extended down the dirt streets ten or twenty feet then turned to dirt or gravel.

NM

[ebtbob]

Ok,

        Thanks for the input.   I too assumed the street might be either asphalt or concrete.   Dirt is out of the question although it would be easier to do.   I think I will go with asphalt.    Thanks again.

[SteamGene]

For asphalt, get some roofing shingles, turn them over.  What do you see?  <g>
Gene

[BIG BEAR]

   Hey Guys,
  I remember doing an asphalt road out of tar paper, aka roofing under layment. A large roll could be carved to our curves, with few splices, relatively easy using an exacto knife. This would help keep the road lower in profile.
  Just a thought,

        Good luck, & Enjoy
         Barry

[Jim Banner]

Of the methods I have tried, the one that gave the best results was done with plaster of Paris.  You can glue some 1/8 x 1/8 styrene curbs in place first.  Then poured the plaster down the middle.  After spreading it out so that it is thin (maybe 1/16" thick) at the curbs to thicker in the center (maybe 1/8",) let it set for a short while.  When it is firm enough, tool the surface with a wide putty knife until finally the plaster hardens.  A few days later when the plaster is dry, it is time to scrape/sand off any ridges left from the tooling and scratch in some cracks with a sharp point (ice pick, scribe, etc.)  You can even carve a few pot holes if you like.  You can then paint the pavement in the colour of your choice.  I use acrylic craft paint for this job, using dark grey for new pavement and lighter grey for old pavement.  The last step is to do the center lines.  You can paint them on if you like but I am lazy and find it much easier to scratch them on with a flat bladed screw drive of the right width.  Up here they use about a 3" wide line so a 1 millimeter wide tip works quite well.  Most lines are straight so I just use a ruler as a guide, scratch in the 1 mm wide line, and let the white plaster of Paris show through.  If you need yellow lines for your time and place, yellow dye or very thin yellow paint applied to the plaster will stain it yellow without messing up the dark grey asphalt.  With worn, lighter grey asphalt, you may have to be more careful.

Jim

[Robertj668]

Barry

I love the Tar Paper idea!

On one railroad I used thin pieces of Balsa wood and painted the either gray or black. It was okay. Plaster of Paris was a great option too.
Robert

[NarrowMinded]

I like black sand paper of various grits for differant scales, really looks good.  it is easy to change the color to older looking with grey chalks. for tar crack repair I use black liquid tape. its a little thick but shrinks up and drys very thin.

NM