Road Techniques

[gavino200]

I was at a train show today. I saw, probably the best road I've ever seen. The picture below is from a cell phone and doesn't fully do it justice. It was made from thin foam and hand painted. The guy had painted the tiny break between road slabs, refinished areas, and even tiny cracks in the paving. 

 

 

What I liked about it most was that it blended well with the roadside, unlike the stuff I see everywhere that comes in a roll. Eg below. I think this stuff ruins a lot of otherwise amazing layouts. 

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/gallery/image/4044-20161113-114937/

 

Here's another shot of the guy's layout. Each road is a separate strip of foam. He carefully fills in the gaps between strips, and paints over. Ballast is added at the road side.

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/gallery/image/4045-20170107-151158/

 

I'm researching for a future phase of our layout. We're going to make ours almost fully urban, so road is super important, if not central.

 

What do you guys think of this guy's technique? Anyone have any interesting road/sidewalk techniques of your own? 

 

Any advise on picking realistic road/street plans? Google earth?

 

 

Edit: Adding this in here so I can find it again

 

http://www.kinet-tv.ne.jp/~psy_sai/make_07.html

 

Edited July 31, 2018 by gavino200

[railsquid]

I use styrene sheets painted with slightly diluted acrylic grey:

 

 

and "embedded" in the scenery:

 

 

Not perfect but does the job.

 

street-scene-crossing by Rail Squid, on Flickr

[VJM]

Mine are MDF airbrushed with Tamiya XF-14 Dark Iron.  Narrow 'pin stripe" masking tape is used for the lines along with rub-on street marking transfers that you can get from Kato and TGW.

 

[gavino200]

 

 

Not perfect but does the job.

 

 

 

Not sure I agree. Look perfect to me!

[gavino200]

Mine are MDF airbrushed with Tamiya XF-14 Dark Iron.  Narrow 'pin stripe" masking tape is used for the lines along with rub-on street marking transfers that you can get from Kato and TGW.

 

 

 

Very nice. You're layout has a very authentic feel to it. How did you decide on your street plan? Photographs? Street maps?

 

I particularly like the street lamps and traffic lights. What make are they?

 

What's MDF? I'm guessing F is 'foam' and M is 'multi'. What do you use to smooth the gaps between sheets of foam/styrene?

[velotrain]

MDF = Medium-density fibreboard

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-density_fibreboard

 

It's quite heavy compared to other materials.

[cteno4]

Gavin,

 

Another option is to print your streets and just glue or stick them down (print on sticker paper). Let's you try lots of things out and get them just how you want them and even print in cracks and road stains, manholes, details, marking, etc.

 

If you paint your roads, fingernail pin tape works well to lay down lane lines. Lane lines are thought to paint as they are less than 1mm wide at scale.

 

Some useful threads on the forum

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/8843-japanese-roads-and-sidewalks/

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/3491-making-streets-and-road-markings/

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/170-making-roads/

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/9547-printing-streets-in-n-scale/

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/7242-modeling-concreteroadways/

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/10619-kobaru-new-releases/

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[speedie]

I was doing research today on roads in Japan for a future layout design and came across this great reference "2015 Roads in Japan".  For those engineers who may want to design their own roads there are technical tables starting on page 54 that have information on road design standards for widths and grades.  http://www.mlit.go.jp/road/road_e/pdf/ROAD2015web.pdf

[cteno4]

Very cool! Thanks.

 

Google satellite and street view also great reference for road design ideas. Great thing again about Japan is all sorts of situations to draw from so a huge range of prototypes!

 

Jeff

[bill937ca]

I was doing research today on roads in Japan for a future layout design and came across this great reference "2015 Roads in Japan".  For those engineers who may want to design their own roads there are technical tables starting on page 54 that have information on road design standards for widths and grades.  http://www.mlit.go.jp/road/road_e/pdf/ROAD2015web.pdf

 

I don't see much information useful for modelers.  Many of the road markings in Japan are unofficial.  An example is the T markings at hidden intersections on narrow roads. These apparently are installed at the direction of local police.  Slow loading website: http://umesakura.jp/20110504231150.html

 

There are still many roads that do not adhere to the four meter (13 foot) standard width.  There issues with fire truck and garbage truck access as shown on this Small Road page of Suginami City (Tokyo) website.   http://www.city.suginami.tokyo.jp/guide/sumai/ie/1004978.html

 

More on the four meter road (Japanese) with good diagrams.  http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~inamaru/chapter-36/chapter-36gadenindo.html

 

Road markings in English from Kanagawa Perfectual Police Department  https://www.police.pref.kanagawa.jp/eng/e_mes/engf1008.htm

 

Japanese Road Signs and Markings   http://tokushimajet.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Japanese-Road-Signs-and-Markings.pdf

Edited January 9, 2017 by bill937ca

[Martijn Meerts]

There are also some companies that have road paint. It looks quite good and has a bit of a rough surface, but all the markings and everything you have to do yourself. I've also only seen dark grey road paint, so not sure if there are other colours, but should be easy enough to lighten it up a bit. It only really works for asphalt roads though, not for the concrete slab type of roads.

[railsquid]

I don't see much information useful for modelers.  Many of the road markings in Japan are unofficial.  An example is the T markings at hidden intersections on narrow roads. These apparently are installed at the direction of local police.  Slow loading website: http://umesakura.jp/20110504231150.html

 

After I started modelling roads, I spent a lot of time observing them, and there do seem to be a lot of inconsistencies in where various marks are applied such as the T ones.

 

There are still many roads that do not adhere to the four meter (13 foot) standard width.  There issues with fire truck and garbage truck access as shown on this Small Road page of Suginami City (Tokyo) website.   http://www.city.suginami.tokyo.jp/guide/sumai/ie/1004978.html

 

 

Chez Railsquid is on a new(ish) 6 metre road but the access roads at either end are 4 ~ 4.5 metres. Fortunately it's on the right side of the railway tracks in terms of emergency vehicle access.

[Claude_Dreyfus]

A couple of pictures of the roads at Kanjiyama.

 

These are simply made by a thin layer of plaster over the base; either the baseboard or the road formation where the road starts to climb through the village. Once sanded down, the road surface is painted on with textured paint. Chances are that the texture in the paint itself needs a little sanding to smooth the surface.  

 

 

 

[gavino200]

Ah, finally found this again. I was looking in the wrong forum. 

[Pashina12]

On this subject, I found this site which has road signs over the years in Japan. Now to find the equivalent of road markings, what they were like in the Showa 40s/1960s...

[gavino200]

This would be a nice addition to a street scene - a traffic light set. It's a little bit pricey though.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10147333/20/1

 

And street signs.

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10040484

Edited December 2, 2017 by gavino200

[cteno4]

You can get some electronic kits to do lights and there are lots of circuit diagrams if you want to breadboard your own. Doing the smd leds into the lights is where the real work is or buying some.

 

jeff

[gavino200]

1 minute ago, cteno4 said:

You can get some electronic kits to do lights and there are lots of circuit diagrams if you want to breadboard your own. Doing the smd leds into the lights is where the real work is or buying some.

 

jeff

 

Thanks. Yes, that's the direction I'd like to go. I'm getting ok at soldering smd LEDs  (Knock on wood so as not to jinx myself).

[IST]

I'd like to ask some help here. I have this T-trak modul with the shops:

 

 

My original thought was that there is a small street in the length of the modul, while cars can park parallel with the shops just front of them. To achieve this I would like to place road markings for parking places, but do not know how (I mean where to put stripes and in what colour and what format, not the technique). I tried to find similar places via Google Maps, but until now without any result. Any advice or picture from the real life?

[railsquid]

1 hour ago, IST said:

My original thought was that there is a small street in the length of the modul, while cars can park parallel with the shops just front of them. To achieve this I would like to place road markings for parking places, but do not know how (I mean where to put stripes and in what colour and what format, not the technique). I tried to find similar places via Google Maps, but until now without any result. Any advice or picture from the real life?

 

It'll be hard to find what you're looking for (on-street markings for parking) because it pretty much doesn't exist in Japan.

[kvp]

Some of the rules:

https://www.police.pref.kanagawa.jp/eng/e_mes/engf1008.htm

[railsquid]

32 minutes ago, railsquid said:

 

It'll be hard to find what you're looking for (on-street markings for parking) because it pretty much doesn't exist in Japan.

 

More specifically, I'm sure there must be some somewhere, but can't think of any. Much more common would be for the stores themselves to provide a small off-road parking area for customers, either between the frontages and the road, or next to the buildings.

 

What you might find are parking meters like this: https://cacaca.jp/drive/22087/ or marked loading bays like this: http://selfpit.way-nifty.com/selfpit/2008/10/in-3bfe.html

 

 

[railsquid]

So what I'd do there is keep the road at the same width, and convert the parking area in front into bays on land belonging to the shops, typically with a concrete or (especially outside of bigger cities) gravel surface.

 

Kind of thing I mean (Streetview): https://goo.gl/maps/NjVhuH3kQ872

 

 

[kvp]

The page i linked above has 3 types of parking marks. In this case, imho the parallel parking pattern would fit nicely. (afaik the kobaru kits have them)

[railsquid]

Yes they'd fit, but not as on-road markings like you see in Europe or the USA, parking lots in front of shops will be separate from the road (I'm sure someone can find an exception if you look hard enough of course). And mostly not parallel parking either.