How To Make Roads, Strrets and Highways
Using A Woodland Scenics Road Kit.

I haven't used the Woodland Scenics Road Kit before. My roads and streets have been made with plaster, styrene or sand. I decided to try something different for a group of streets around industrial buildings at Mintwood on my Utopia Northern model railroad. This is a work in progress (January, 2012).

The first step was to lay out the streets using scrap cardboard until I got a configuration I liked. This included the parking areas at several factories.

After doing this I opened the Woodland Scenics Road Kit and discovered that a nifty road measuring ruler was included. It gives typical 2-lane road widths in N, HO and O guage and the marking templates for sidewalks and parking. I found I could narrow some of the roads and leave out the sidewalk area that I didn't want to include on all portions. I recut some of the cardboard to change the pattern. This will give me more room to add some other buildings after the roads are completed. I had to fill in some open areas in the benchwork with homasote. This will need to be covered with plaster cloth before I can make roads.

The next step was to transfer the cardboard templates to a piece of hardboard. I did this to limit the number of joints in the roads that would have to be filled with spackling or drywall compound. I used a Sharpie pen to draw the outlines and marked the scrap areas with an "X".

The hardboard will form and define the pavement area. As the road must cross the tracks into Utopia the hardboard should bring the street close to the railhead. The track is sitting on cork roadbed. I didn't have any plaster cloth on hand so I had to improvise. Before proceeding I stuffed some paper towel into the cracks between the scrap pieces of homasote I used to fill in the missing section of scenery. I could have used a piece of J-cloth or even some masking tape to keep the plaster from falling through the cracks. I layered on some spackling compound I had on hand on top of the paper towel in the cracks to prepare the scenery for additional ground cover and the roads. The next step was to cut out the hardboard to see how it fits the area. After that I will use the pavement and concrete paint that comes in the road kit to make roads. A neighbour and fellow member of our Nottawasaga Model Railway Club (NMRC)., Gary Robinson, cut out the masonite on his band saw. This produced cleaner edges than I could have done with a sabre saw.

Some pieces had to be shaped to fit, especially around the rails. I used a Zona model saw with fine teeth, a utility knife and a band sander to do the final shaping. The utility knife was used to shave off a few layers on the back of the masonite so the pieces would not foul wheels crossing the road. I used a piece of black styrene for one curved crossing. The masonite roads were cemented in place using a tube of "No More Nails" and weighted down with an assortment of weights. I smeared some wood filler on the joints. When everything is dry I will sand the joints and complete the rail crossings. One of them has to cross over a turnout near the frog. This will take some extra tinkering.

I used scrap styrene in various thicknesses to build up the road crossings.

I used a test car from Micro Mark to check flange clearance. This car is basically a clear piece of acrylic so you can see what's happening as the wheels pass through the crossing. In some cases I cut pieces of masonite to fit up to the rails while in others I used styrene. As several of the roads cross turnouts I had to be very careful to keep the styrene below the railheads and to shape the pieces to provide clearance for the wheel flanges. I secured them with Goo.

The next step was to paint the roadways.

It took three coats of the water-based asphalt paint that came in the kit to get adequate coverage. There was just enough paint in the jar to do the roads I had installed. For my previous attempts at building roads I had used a gray color. This is more blackish and looks more like wet roads or recently paved roads. I will probably try some weathering before I finish. I had left one section of the road wider so I could try installing a sidewalk. The kit has a jar of concrete-colored paint. I cut a length of masonite about 7 scale feet wide and used a razor saw and a file to add expansion cracks every six feet.

The road crosses two sidings and a turnout on the mainline. I had to fill in around the tracks. Previously I had installed rerailer tracks here and the road didn't line up correctly. I had to cut and fit little wedge-shaped pieces of styrene to fill some gaps. The bits of dirt need to be removed before adding markings.

So far, so good. The experiment in road making appears to be working out OK.

Temporary setback

I have never tried putting on road markings.

The road painters from Utopia need better tools and training! The first attempt at adding road markings didn't fare too well. The Woodland Scenics kit contains a metal pin that can be used. I had no success using it to paint lines. Maybe if it is used to scratch the surface to reveal white underneath it might work OK. I don't have white underneath the asphalt. The masonite is light brown. I reverted to using a small brush to paint the lines with Polly Scale white paint. That didn't work any better. It is very difficult to control the thickness of the lines even with a steady hand. Painter's masking tape lifted some of the asphalt paint. I may leave off until I find a white paint pen to try. I believe Scale Coat makes paint pens. I have a silver paint pen that I found in an artist's supply store but haven't found a white paint pen yet. The other alternative is to use some kind of thin striping material. While digging around in Internet model railroad forums I saw that some modelers have had good success using roofing shingles to make roads. Interesting idea. Masking the roads for lines and using a light spray of white or yellow seems to be the preferred method. This may take awhile to get resolved so this project is temporarily on hold. I have plenty of other projects to occupy me until I can find a solution.

More to come about how to make roads when I get this figured out. Some experimenting is in order!

Update: Effect of masking

I decided to try masking the lines. I figured the worst that could happen is I would have to repaint the asphalt. Masking with blue painter's tape certainly helps to give cleaner lines. Making good road markings is a challenge to be sure. I wasn't following any particular prototypical road markings. I only wanted something that looked plausible.

The asphalt had dried for 24 hours so this time the paint didn't lift. I pressed down the edge of the tape with my fingernail. There was still some creepage under the edge of the tape. Because of the close quarters with the buildings I didn't try to spray paint. I used a small flat-tipped brush to touch up the lines I'd painted freehand and took up the tape after about 30 minutes. The lines are a little wide in spots but certainly look better. This whole area still needs a lot of work, including ballasting the track and adding other buildings.

If you have a better idea how to make roads with cleaner line markings send me an email through my Contact page and I'll post your suggestions.

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There are more photos of modeling roads and street in the Train Photos Gallery.

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Other ideas and experiments in modeling roads.

Learn about building terrain.

Methods for making trees.

Paint a scenery backdrop.

Catch attention with mini-scenes.

Return from how to "make-roads" to my Home Page.

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