Any True-Track Road Crossing Ideas?

[Anonymous]

I'm at the point in my layout construction where I'm beginning to think about roads and invariably where they will cross the track. Since I'm a beginner I opted for the all in one Atlas True-Track. Seemed like a good idea at the time but now I'm beginning to wonder. Does anyone out there have any ideas how I could create a reasonably good looking auto crossing over my Atlas True-Track? Thanks so much for your help.
Gregg

[pcarrell]

lioneltwain,

Since this type of track has the roadbed already attatched you will have to bring the roads up to the railtops. This is not all that hard to do and there are several ways to do it, depending on the desired end result.

Let's say you are modeling the city, or maybe a main road of some sort. The road is not going to rise up very much, if at all, as it approaches the tracks. This means that they are on roughly the same level to start with. I'm not sure how tall the railtops are fromthe tabetop, but whatever that measurement is, you need to bring the raods up to that level. Some 1/4 inch foam or sheet cork might just do the trick. Just cut out the shape you want your road to be in and glue it down. Now just make your road as any of the scenery books describe (sheet styrene works pretty good for this). Don't forget to cut a piece of the sheet styrene to go between the the rails (leave room for the wheel flanges and don't make it too high or it will trip up your rolling stock). You can test the right height by temporarily gluing it down with rubber cement and trying it out. If it works OK just peel off the rubber cement and glue it down solid.

Country roads can be a little different. Some of them can be quite level with the tracks and in those cases just do like you did in the city. For those roads that have a hump in them when they approach the tracks there are several ways to do that. You could make a ramp out of putty, but I've seen these crack over time occasionally. Probably a better solution is to bevel something to make a ramp for the approach. Scrap wood could be used, but to me that's an awful lot of work for something so small. You could also use the cork sheets and sand them, but that seems kind of expensive to me. I just found a construction site and and they gave me a couple of scrap pieces of that 2 inch foam insulation (that will be enough for hundreds of crossings) and I just use an old hack saw blade to shape some ramps out of it. If you cut a block the length and width you need and then saw diagonally through the height of the block you can do the ramps on both side of the track at the same time!

Hope that gives you some ideas. There are many more ways to do this and maybe someone else will have a better idea. If so, I'll be watching so I can learn too!

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much for that great help. I really appreciate the time you took to explain.
Gregg

[Medina1128]

On my current layout, I used some sheet styrene and scored lines into it with an Xacto knife. Then, using a black wash created the dark areas in-between the "boards". The using a Q-tip with burnt umber acrylic latex, rubbed it in real good. Looks nice.