Roads are a strange thing. They take you to places and most of us use them everyday. Lots of songs have been written about them including that classic by Talking Heads - We're on a Road to Nowhere - Youtube video. However in model form they usually go nowhere apart from in our minds and despite using real roads every day our modelling interpretations of them can be far off the mark. The main thing is that tarmac roads are not black apart from a few days after they have been laid. They weather and organically dry out so that the oils in the binder that holds the stones together become less effective. That is in essence how potholes start with the small stones becoming loose in the surface as the binder dries out forming a depression and allowing moisture into the structure. Anyway this is a modelling blog and not a highway maintenance tutorial!
As we use roads so much it is interesting to still see the number of model railways where the road is modelled black. Have a look at some of the roads around where you live and you will see all sorts of shades of grey tarmac and chippings. On my 009 layout I do have a road which goes to nowhere and is of shades of grey. From one of my earlier posts you'll see in the picture below that the road just went along two thirds of the layout.
Thinking of my plans to extend in the future I decided to run the road off the end of the board across the track. Some mounting card and some filler saw the road installed and then it was time to paint it all. The original part of the road had been given a random spray of Halfords (other brands are available but it was what was in the WMD HQ stores at the time ) grey primer just to seal the surface and I never saw this as the finished road surface. The grey for the road was mixed by putting some acrylic white paint into an old ice-cream tub (raspberry ripple if you are interested and no doubt there is a website somewhere that tells you what sort of person you are by the type of ice-cream you eat but I'm not going to look....yet!) and then putting blobs of black acrylic into it. Mixing the two colours in different parts of the tub gave slightly different hues of grey as you can see from the picture.
You will also notice from the picture above a stranger to modelling materials - Talcum Powder! Strange as it may seem talcum powder mixed into paint gives it some texture. Roads are not smooth otherwise it would be like driving on a skating rink so they have some texture to allow tires and shoes to grip. Very difficult to achieve in 4mm scale but the talcum powder gives a good impression of it. In case you are wondering I have purloined this tin from Mrs Woody who informs that talcum powder is now out of fashion these days for various reasons so I have given it a good home and the road smells fragrantly lovely! Or is it my aftershave???!!!
Anyway the painting of the road continues and this road to no where will get finished!
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