Highway question and possible movement answer.

[Anonymous]

Hey all, first post ever. I'm new and in the planning stage of my first layout.
My question is what is some of the best pre-made road available. Keep in mind I'm on a budget. Making my own just doesn't sound like a good idea. I need something that can have a continuous tunnel underneath. Why you ask? I want a road to run around my layout, but seems useless to have a nice moving train and a static highway. So I was searching through the forum and saw some guys talking about a conveyor system and magnets. It sounded good but wasn't quit what I wanted or even knew where to start. Not to mention how would you go around turns. I have a couple slot car tracks, but who wants a big ditch in the middle of your road with out of scale race cars. So I thought, what if I use the slot cars in conjunction with the magnet idea. 'Have the track running hidden below the 'real' highway with magnets strapped to the slot cars pulling the in scale cars down the road. Still a lot of work but about only inexpensive route I can come up with. So help me pick some pre-made road and gently poke holes in my theory.

[Anonymous]

Take a look at the picture on the right side of page 77 of the February Model Railroader. . . Is that what you have in mind? The text says its based on something called the "Faller guided car system". I don't know what that is, but maybe someone else does.

[Anonymous]

I'm afraid I don't have any mags yet, I just started this week. But if it can give me some direction I guess I'll go pick it up. Thankx.

[Jetrock]

If you're on a budget, you might consider just doing what most of us do--buy static cars that don't move down the road. After all, this is model railroading, not model highwaying...

[Anonymous]

Thanks Jetrock, that was insightful. What was I thinking. Maybey I'll leave out the scenery since this isn't 'Model Scenery'. [8D] Anyways, for my 'static' road, any suggestions?

[Anonymous]

PRI:

I have to agree with Jetrock: As you are an absolute beginner, I suggest you stick to formulating a plan which will accent the railroading aspect of your model railroad. Rather than seeking to animate your automobiles, consider two or three scenes involving autos which don't require movement.

Several manufacturers who make interesting autos, Jordan Enterprises, to name one. If you are interested in road building consider having a tableau of a road under construction, complete with materials and machinery, to include sewers and curbing. That should be interesting to viewers, moving or not.

Too few of us remember that we are modeling a reality which is continually under construction/reconstruction.

To answer your question: I suggest you not buy pre-made roads but rather make your own if you are on a budget. I have had good success with what is called 'joint and taping compound'. It is used to cover cracks and tape in wallboard applications. It is relatively cheap and doesn not crack when applied in thin coats. It easily simulates both cement and asphalt roads. You can pre-color it with pigment powders to suit your application, sands easily when dry and takes weathering and detailing well. Remember that road widths and thicknesses weren't 'standard' until relatively recently.

Good Luck

Randy

PS: Please be sure to include what scale and era you are modeling when asking a question. Makes it much easier for someone to answer in an on point helpful way.

R

[Anonymous]

Thanks, that's more of the response I expect. I'm shooting for HO in modern day. It's funny I should receive such negativity for wanting to do this from the very forum that inspired the idea in the first place. I started this thread for fear that continuing one a month old, my post would've been over looked. Perhaps I should talk to those fellows and see if they made any progress.

[Jetrock]

Well, part of the reason you are encountering "negativity" is because what you want to do is something fairly hard and expensive to do. If you've only been interested in model railroading for a week, it's fine for you to ask questions but some of those questions will result in "no" answers. You can't run HO "Big Boy" articulated locomotives on 15" curves, regardless of one's attitude...

For starters, you specified that you were on a budget and the only commercial systems for scooting cars around are fairly expensive. Faller makes one, but it costs $100 for the basic set and about $10-20 per foot of street length, and the special powered vehicles cost about $90 each. It also doesn't appear to be able to do grade crossings, which are very common things where roads and raolroads meet. There's another system I have seen, but it's kind of a slow-speed "slot car" system and you already said you didn't like the idea of a slot down the middle of the street.

Second, you said that you didn't want to build the road surface yourself but seemed to be willing to modify a slot-car track underneath the road surface to serve as a magnet carrier, which would be A LOT more work than just laying down a road surface. The slot-car track idea has some problems, too--you'd need to fabricate tracks above the slot-car surface but below the road to carry the sliding magnets, the cars being dragged along the road by the magnets would cause friction and eventually wear away the road surface, and, possibly most importantly, slot cars go very fast and their slow-speed ability is almost nil--you could simulate cars racing around at 100 scale miles per hour (most slot cars go much faster than 100 scale miles per hour) but not traffic at normal speed ranges. And, like the other methonds listed above, none of them will successfully negotiate grade crossings--even if the magnet was strong enough, the metal tracks would interfere with things.

But, if you're not into negativity, let me talk about ways to model street scenes. I have a lot of street scenes planned on my layout because I model an urban belt line that goes around the edge of a city and runs, for the most part, on the streets themselves. I model 1940's-50's so most streets will be concrete, which I'll model with posterboard and/or styrene painted with a coat of Aged Concrete paint and some weathering.

If you're modeling a modern era, then asphalt road is probably what you want to model.There are many ways to do this--poured plaster, foam roadbed, even pre-made "street rolls" which are already marked with centerlines, pedestrian crossings, parking lots, etcetera. You can also get plastic kits to simulate lengths of elevated freeway, which can run over your railroad's mainline. City streets can be very busy-looking when filled with vehicles and people, even if the cars aren't moving--you can use sound (pre-recorded horn honks and engine noise) to create the impression of hustle and bustle even with a static model. The model of Chicago on the giant layout at Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry uses static (non-moving) cars, but because it's busy with sound and looks right it is very convincing.

[Anonymous]

PRI:

Two things.

First: When you post an addition to an existing thread it moves to the top of the order, regardless of how long its been since the thread was last active.

Second: Virtually all the posters here are animated in a postive attempt to help the other posters. Jetrock is no exception. His post, to me at least, was an attempt to aid in your thinking, not demean you. The very best advice I get here leads me to think through what I have in mind. Its ALWAYS preferable to learn from the experience of others than from our own mistakes. ;)

Good Luck

Randy

[Anonymous]

If I read this right, he's wanting to know an easy way to do roads, reguardless of Scale. So if that's the case, try Woodland Scenics instant road system http://www.woodlandscenics.com/ .

They also have various learning kits as well, sicne you are very very new to the hobby, i'd sugest buying one of their Learning kits (probably the Road System Kit and the Scenery Kit), they will dramatically help you learn the basics of Terrain features.

As for road vehicles, go to www.walthers.com and do an advanced search and look at what they have for them. then once you've found a few dozen or so you like, take that information to your Local Hobby Shop (LHS) and see if they can get them for you cheaper than what's listed.

As for moving the cars. buses, trucks, that is a very very expensive undertaking and ultimatly turns out to look like crap (IMHO), after you get the cars moving, then you wish you could get the people to move, well by this time it's time to move up to 1:2 or 1:1 scale, since their the only scales that really allow for moving vehicles and people reaslitically.

Jay