I am having trouble making gravel or dirt type driveways and county roads look good. The fine ballast from woodland scenic's still seems too course to look realistic. Some suggestions would be appreciated for how to make country roads and driveways look more realistic.
thanks, Rob
I use finely sifted (repeatedly sifted) fireplace ash to make gravel roads (also cinder ballast in both HO and N). It has the right color and vaguely granular consistency yet you do not see the small pellets that you do with fine ballast. I secure it in place with carefully applied Scenic Cement, as you would ballast.
I explained my techniques in the Summer 2010 issue of the NMRA Midwest Region's Waybill, which can be found on their website. It is in my Frugal Modeler column.
Dave Nelson
Hi
I agree with Dave but also find that children's play sand which you can buy in the 50lb bag at any garden store works well too. You would have to glue it using white glue and water mix and then you can paint it flat gray or black. I used it on my first layout and it turned out pretty well. The ballast is too hard and coarse and if you have free rolling cars and trucks their wheels make alot of noise on the gravel.
Regg
SWA737The fine ballast from woodland scenic's still seems too course to look realistic.
The "fine" ballast still represents what would be large gravel in most scales.
My favorite material for dirt and gravel roads is very fine sand. For the tire tracks I dry-brush acrylic paint over the appropriate areas after the sand is glued down. The paint fills some of the spaces between sand grains to look like compacted dirt deposited from elsewhere and/or brought to the surface as gravel is worn into the ground.
Overlapping patterns in parking lots are easy to add with the paint too.
Rob Spangler
Dirt roads are just that... dirt. I find WS "Dirt" ground turf to be just fine for this. After your glue has been setting for a few minutes, you can use a scale vehicle to make wheel ruts if you desire.
Gravel roads, on the other hand, are usually surfaced with1/2 to 3/4 inch crushed stone, which is roughly 0.008 inches in HO. Basically the consistency of very fine sand. Even play sand is a little coarse, and needs to be screened to remove the bigger pieces. See if you can find some very fine white sand at a craft store.
Ballast is somewhat coarser, at 2-4", although medium ballast is more like 6-8 scale inches.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
I have a series of strainers/sifters, from about 3/16" down to a very fine tea strainer. What makes it through the finest strainer makes good surface material for dirt roads.
What doesn't go through each strainer gets placed in seperate jugs, so that I have a selection of partical sizes.
Good luck,
Richard
Rob, I have a different take on making dirt roads. I use a combination of Sculptamold/Structolite or Gypsolite. It contains fine perlite, which I think makes a passable dirt road.
I have just made a road for an exhibition layout that debuts tomorrow(!) to the general public. We used clay cats litter sifted to a smaller size, whcih was glued, allowed to dry and sanded down with a sanding block after it was laid. I'll get some photos on the weekend but I am about to leave to set up!
Hope the description helps anyway,
Regards from Oz
Trevor www.xdford.digitalzones.com fyinterest
Hi SWA737
Well drive ways would be kept neet and tidy by the home owners so try sandpaper painted an apropriate colour.
This might also work for dirt roads if you have the right colour paint for the road and a slightly different shade of dirt for the tyre tracks.
regards John
If you use zip texturing like I do, you can add ballast to the mix till you get the look you are after.
I recently went for a walk at a local park. There were a few spots on the asphalt path where dirt had washed down onto the path. It was extremely fine, nearly as fine as talcum powder. I suppose only the tiniest particles are carried away by the water. Dirt like that would probably work well.
Steve S
I thought of something else that could work. We have a few backpaths around here that are surfaced with pea gravel. In a lot of areas the gravel has thinned to expose the ground below, but it's covered in a very fine gray powder. This stuff might work for a gravel road. It might not be practical to scoop up a lot of it, but if you don't need a lot it might be worth experimenting with.
The pictures I promised earlier are posted in a different forum
http://yourmodelrailway.net/gallery/374/374_061303_410000000.jpg
http://yourmodelrailway.net/gallery/374/374_061258_580000000.jpg
You should be able to see the entire lot of photos on
http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic.php?id=12657&forum_id=65
Hope you enjoy them,
Cheers from Melbourne Australia
Trevor
I find that tile grout and or tile thinset is great for gravel/dirt road applications. Spinkle a little fine ballast around or along the edges and it looks great.
A spray with a wash or even an airbrush can alter the colour nicely.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
I use dirt from the back yard (we have sandy soil) and sift to varying degrees of finess. works great and the color is very natural..
Jay
C-415 Build: https://imageshack.com/a/tShC/1
Other builds: https://imageshack.com/my/albums
Call me persnickity, but since I am modeling one particular area of the UP of Michigan, I only use finely sifted sand from one particular backwoods road in the area I model. I go there once a year with a few coffee cans, gather it up and truck it home - mind that the spot is about 350 miles from my house. True, I could probably get the same thing a whole lot closer to home, but it's chance to do some serious trout and perch fishing. The upside is that once it's strained, sifted a few times and baked, I get several different textures that I use all over the layout.
There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.....