I am laying n scale track for my layout, depicting New Hampshire. I purchased a Woodland Scenics C1149 wooden grade crossing that measures about 1 and 1/2 inch in width.
Before setting this in permanently, I would like to verify this, planning on 1/4 inch gravel and grass shoulders. I know road widths vary but do you think this would be a good grade crossing for n scale in a rural setting?
It looks good to me. There are as many different styles of road crossing configurations as there are townships across the country.
Take a drive around and see how they are done in your area.
Mike.
My You Tube
Isn't N scale 1/160. An inch and a half equates to 240 inches or 20 feet. That seems about right for a secondary rural road. A state or US highway would probably be a bit wider. I live on a gravel country road that connects to two secondary roads. I know our gravel road isn't 20 feet wide. Next time I'm out, I'll pace off the width of the secondary roads.
Thanks, currently immobile due to medical reasons.
DonRicardoBefore setting this in permanently, I would like to verify this, planning on 1/4 inch gravel and grass shoulders. I know road widths vary but do you think this would be a good grade crossing for n scale in a rural setting?
My layout is HO scale, and most of my rural roads are about 20' wide, with not much in the way of gravel shoulders, and no centre lines, either...
...and a couple of gravel roads with crossings...
Wayne
Looking thru highway standards, 10' lane width seems to be an old standard. 11' and 12' is recommended for higher speeds and more truck traffic. Freeway lanes are 12'.
Roads cn be any size at all. Don't worry about inches or feet, just make sopmething yhat looks good to you. Remember, you can force perspective by maiking the road narrower as it moves away from you. If you have a road that is supposed to be in the distance you can model it in N or Z scale
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
At least in Pa. back in the horse and buggy days a cartway's normal width for two directions was 16'. Many old country Pa. roads were paved to this dimension when cars replaced horses. Later a 10' width took it's place right after WW2. When the Lincoln Highway Rt 30 was paved here in SE Pa. about 1915 or so it had two 10' lanes.
I read this story a long time ago and it sounds more like urban myth than historical fact but it's interesting anyway. It's the kind of story I'd like to be true.
Are U.S. Railroad Gauges Based on Roman Chariots? | Snopes.com
Roads are 'narrower' the further away they are.
1-87 One foot away - 87 feet away.
In real life very little of a road is seen 87 feet away, so one foot in model terms doesn't need much.
The buildings at the rear are one foot away.
IMG_2584 by David Harrison, on Flickr
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
As several have pointed out, lane width varies a lot, even today.
Here in the older, more congested, more populated east, there are still lots of rural roads with 8' traffic lanes and no shoulders at all. And urban streets in 300 year old cities with 8'-10' lanes are very common.
And roads more narrow than these can still be found.
Sure, the busy main thruways have been widened and modernized. Old residential streets, or side streets in small towns, not so much.
In our county, which only has three small towns, there are still way more miles of roadway with 10' lanes and no shoulders than there are wide modern highways with shoulders big enough to pull off the road.
And we are not that far from big cities - 40 minutes to Baltimore, an hour to Philly.
Sheldon
Our farm was in Pa, right on the southern border. We were on a dirt road (we called it the "clumsy road") that was wide enough for one car, and one car only. It might have been 8 feet wide, maybe, It was crushed stone rolled into the mud. The old Western Maryland ran through the bottom of the farm, and that road had a wooden plank crossing. Those old 2-8-0 steamers had a pizazz the newer diesels lacked!
We spent a lot of time on US30, it was concrete by that time.
Here is a photo of the road in front of our house. Prior to 1964, this was Maryland Route 155, a major route between Bel Air and Havre de Grace.
Today the road is pretty much the way it was in the late 50's and early 60's.
The traffic lanes are roughly 10'-6", no gravel or paved shoulder, no edge of the paving white line.
In 1964 the nearby section of Interstate 95 was being completed and MD155 was widened with 12' lanes and 6' shoulders, and realigned to go around our neighborhood and several others.
These remaining sections of the old road were renamed and turned over to county ownership.
I remember 1 lane concrete farm roads..even into the 70s