Ok so tonight I built roads! I decided to change things up from the tape roads just a bit. First there is going to be a slight hill at the station so the platform is right at curb level. I did this with some wood and cork and will make the contours smooth with some drywall mud. Sorry no pic of this part, and I will post it in the T-Trak thread when I do. Now for the part I do have pics of and the other change I made. I decided to shape the roads in a way that they line up with or without the station module in place. This allows me to remove the station, or add a module to either end if I want to expand the scene. After all I have 2 trains that will not fit the station siding. So this change gives me some flexibility. Now to the roads themselves. I made them out of water color paper and then glued that to the module. By using water color paper it gives the road a texture as well as being very resilient to the wetness of the paint. They are 2” wide which gives me 3 lanes with room around the cars. The DQ will have a drive through, and the road beside the Denny’s will only show half of the right lane next to the building. and as you can see these are the final locations for these buildings on this side of the module.
I have seen a lot of town/road arrangements where the road is closer to tracks out of town, then has S-curve as it enters town to leave more room for businesses between track and road.
That's kinda what I have going on here. I'm hoping to get a bit more work done this weekend, I have weather dependent work on my Trail 90 (painting the engine pieces) and it is supposed to me nasty this weekend. So far the weather has been holding so we will see. I will be shaping the contours of the road near the station with drywall mud. It is soft and light, sands really nice and I am hoping after the scenery is in place it will toughen up a bit. I used the same stuff on my desktop tram layout and it worked quite well for the roads there. I have been experimenting with different ways to make roads and so far I am liking the watercolor paper. I have tried in the past to use plastic, it worked pretty good but shaping was not as easy as other methods. My small layout I used fiber board which was easy to work with but warped when it got wet from the paint. The drywall mud on the Tram layout worked pretty good but I have not painted that yet so we will see how that turns out when I do, and lastly the watercolor paper. It glued down really nice, stayed where I put it and didn't warp. The paper is thick and has a good texture to it that will hopefully give the road a bit of interest. Time will tell.
I noticed that a lot when driving in Texas. Here in Georgia, I see a lot of the main road next to the tracks with stations tending to be across the tracks on a side street
Nave you considered bringing the road to the back of the 2 middle modules? That would free up space between the road and the tracks for buildings. You might leave an inch or two (or even three) between the road and the back of the module for some scenery.
yes I did, and to be realistic that would have meant having the buildings turned away from the viewing side of the layout, and I didn’t want that. Yes it would be very realistic, but not visually appealing. I have been considering some new ideas for new modules that have the track in behind the module not in the front, just for this reason.
